Promises
by WeiXiao
Summary: Promise: A declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen. (Oxford Dictionary) When a Neighbor decides to run away from home, there's usually a reason. In one particular Neighbor's case, he's keeping a promise to someone precious to him. This is an experiment of sorts. Please R&R
1. Chapter 1

**Do the fanfics stop?**

 **Guess not. World Trigger it is. 1** **st** **person, switches to 3** **rd** **person perspective every once in a while to get other people's views.**

* * *

"AAAHHHHHHH! GODDAMMIT!"

Yeah, not the best way to introduce myself. But then again, when you're trying to take a portal to another world and the portal ends up dropping you a few stories above the ground, screaming is probably in order. Especially when there's a giant trion soldier just above, falling at the same rate as you. So in very basic summary, I just appeared in this world and if I don't do something, I'm going to get squished.

But first things first, screaming has to finish.

Alright, there we go. That's better. My screaming is done, now I can focus on that…

Oh yeah. Giant trion soldier about to fall on top of me. This is what I get for trying to get through a portal before a rabbit gets through. How inconvenient. Well, better get rid of it. It should be easy enough, getting rid of it.

One shot at its eye and it went down.

There's only one problem though. What do I do with the body? It's still gonna fall… on me…

Shit.

Suffice to say, getting squished by a rabit was not my ideal way of starting my new life over in Meeden.

* * *

"Hey, are you alright?"

I was about to get up, but then I took a sun to my eyes. Not exactly the way I wanted to start the day. I blinked for a few moments before I took in the sight. There was a girl in front of me, somewhat tall with black, neck-length hair. But that was beside the point.

I sat up, rubbing my neck as I got up. "Yeah, I'm mostly fine."

"You were under that trion soldier. There's no way you're alright after something like that."

"I have my ways."

"Whatever, but I'm still taking you to the hospital."

My brain jogged itself as I remembered why I came here. "Hey, do you know an organization called Border?"

The girl looked at me strangely. "Who doesn't?"

"Now, now Kumagai. There's no need to get on this guy's case. After all, his brain might still be scrambled from being under that trion soldier for so long" A girl's voice said from behind her.

The one that I was currently talking to looked abashed. "Yes, Nasu-senpai."

As I got up, my eyes focused on my surroundings. The girl behind Kumagai wasn't that different height-wise. She had neck-length hair also, but it was much straighter and blonde.

"My apologies." I said. "It's just that I'm looking for a friend at Border."

The girl looked at me thoughtfully. "I'm actually an agent at Border. I could probably help you find your friend if you wanted."

"Thanks." I said.

"So, what's your na-"

All of a sudden an alarm sounded and a portal appeared above us. Why couldn't I have taken this portal instead? I extinguished that thought when I saw the rabit coming out of the gate.

"Warning, Gate opening."

"Ah, crap. Get out of here! We'll deal with this." Kumagai shouted.

"Actually, how about I help you, seeing as you're going to help me with finding my friend." I said.

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"Trigger on."

* * *

POV CHANGE: 3rd person, Nasu unit

* * *

The members of Nasu unit could only stare, shocked as they saw the guy before them equipping a trigger. What had originally had been a small investigation as to why there was a dead rabbit when no Border agent had been around turned into a rescue mission and then into this.

The guy was actually a pretty nice-looking guy. In fact, the guy kind of reminded them of Karasuma from the Tamakoma branch. He even had the curly hair to go along with it. The biggest difference though, was the face structure and the eyes. A lot thinner from the cheek to the chin. It looked more like a point. And his irises were a startling silver.

But that was beside the point at the moment. What they were focused on at the moment was the guy's transformation. It was rather brief. The only thing that happened was that his attire changed to black in color.

Other than that, they couldn't see anything significantly different about his trigger. Until he raised his arm and fired a blast of trion at the rabit, piercing it right through the eye. Completely neutralized.

The members of Nasu unit stared at the guy. For one thing, his trigger wasn't a standard border trigger. For another, he had just taken down a rabit. One of the trion soldiers from Aftokrator, the land which was apparently the largest military power in all of the Neighborhood. According to all sources, even an A-rank soldier would have trouble fighting against a rabbit. And this guy just destroyed one with ease. No effort used at all.

To put things in context, Nasu unit was a B-rank squad. They were nowhere near as good as an A-rank squad as far as they were concerned. Fighting a rabbit would have been out of question for them.

Another thing that was a point of bother was his trigger. It wasn't like any of the triggers that they had seen before. For all they knew, it wasn't even a standard Border trigger.

Which instantly begged the question: Who was this guy?

Before any of them could ask, they saw Kuga Yuma walk up to the area, a frown on his face.

"Lucca? What are you doing here?" He asked.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person

* * *

At that voice, my head turned to see my old friend. "Yuma! It's good to see you."

"You're not answering the question, Lucca. Why are you here? I thought you were still in Liberi." Yuma said.

I looked down. "I ran away. They were going to do something I couldn't let happen."

He frowned. "What did they do? You wouldn't have left Liberi if it didn't have something to do with Aria."

"About that…"

"What happened to Aria?" He asked.

As I deactivated my trigger, I shook my head. "Now's not the time. For now, let's go to Border."

"I doubt that they're going to accept you that easily." He said. "The only reason that I was let into Border was because someone vouched for me."

"Well, I guess you'll have to vouch for me then." I said.

"…I'll try." Yuma said.

Before we got going, I turned to the two (wait, there's a third one with a cap) Border agents that were standing to the side. "My apologies, I'm not going to need your help finding my friend. He actually found me first."

The blonde girl, who I instantly figured was the leader, nodded her head. "That's alright. You found your friend, which is good, so that works well for you."

"At the very least, thanks for offering your help. My name's Lucca." I said, extending my hand.

She took it. "Rei Nasu. This is my unit. Yuko Kumagai and Akane Kiura. Pleasure to meet you."

"Lucca, come on." Yuma said.

"Right then, I'll talk to you later. Maybe." I said. "Really depends on what's going to happen to me in the next few hours."

* * *

POV CHANGE: 3rd Person

* * *

As Nasu unit watched Lucca watched off, they could only wonder a bit about him.

"That guy is Kuga's friend?" Kumagai asked.

"Looks like it." Nasu replied. "And from the looks of it, he's a humanoid Neighbor as well."

* * *

 **Welp, that's a wrap for now. This is more of a writing experiment than anything else, so I might not finish this. I want to see how well I can transition between different points of view.**

 **Reviews appreciated.**

 **Oh yeah, setting starts around chapter 80/81 of the manga. So the invasion finished.**

 **edit: changed Lucca's appearance, added eye color.**

 **Other than that:**

 ***insert shameless advertising for my fanfic 'Reaching Out' here***


	2. Chapter 2

**Nothing like a new chapter to give you more fun when writing**

* * *

POV: 3rd person

* * *

When Yuma Kuga had gone out on patrol, he was at least somewhat sure that there might be some leftover portals opening from after the large-scale invasion. What he didn't expect was to find a friend of his from back when he was travelling around to the different planet-nations in the Neighborhood with his father.

It had started out as a portal alarm. Yuma ran as quickly as he could to get to the location of the portal, as he was almost certain that what was coming out would be Aftokrator trion soldiers, most of which were trouble for anyone less than A-rank. And from what he knew, Nasu unit was patrolling that area. And they were B-rank, so the possibility that they would go down fighting a trion soldier from Aftokrator, while not that high, was high enough that he was concerned.

Instead of finding a trion soldier though (technically, it was already dead), he found his old friend Lucca from back when he and his father had travelled to Liberi, the marine nation. In a way, it made sense that Lucca was here now. Liberi was also one of the planet-nations orbiting Earth around this time.

During their days of travelling, the Kuga family had stayed at Lucca's home where he lived with his sister Aria. Aria was a sickly girl. However, she was also very sweet and polite to them, always trying to offer to help them with anything that they needed. When they were there, they found out that she had actually had a massive capacity for trion. While it wasn't as high as the trion capacity of Chika, it was still very high compared to the vast majority of trion organs.

Lucca was also a relatively skilled trigger user, being able to learn to use how to use any trigger given to him in about a day or two.

During his time there, Yuma gathered a few points of information about Lucca and Aria. Firstly, Lucca would do about anything for his sister, whether it be a huge thing or a trivial thing. Secondly, he was also very protective of her, tending to every single injury of hers, whether it be big or small. Aria was very fragile, so that wasn't too surprising. Lastly, Aria loved her older brother to no end. She wanted to be with him everywhere he went, which was difficult given her condition.

These three facts alone shed one light about the current situation. Something happened to Aria, otherwise Lucca wouldn't be here on Earth at this very moment.

Eventually, Yuma and Lucca made it to the entrance to the main Border facility. Lucca looked up at the facility. "Wow. This looks way larger up close."

"Yeah, I know. Come on in, I'll take you to the executives. After all, they're the ones that you need to convince to vouch for you."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person

* * *

As we walked in, I couldn't help but look around at the facility. It was really clean. Organization seemed pretty good as well. As we walked, I spotted a guy wearing a blue jacket walking over.

"Oh hey, Yuma. Did something happen?" He asked.

"I met an old friend." Yuma replied. "This guy over here."

He extended his hand. "Nice to meet you. My name is Jin Yuichi. I'm a talented elite."

I took his hand. "Lucca. Nice to meet you too, I guess?"

Jin turned back to Yuma. "So what are you doing now?"

"I need to take this guy to the higher-ups."

"Really now? In that case, I'll go with you. I have some things I need to talk to them about."

We walked along in silence until we finally made it to a door, which I guess was where the executives were. Jin opened it first. One of the guys inside, the one with the glasses, waved his hand.

"Nice to see you on time Jin. Before we start our meeting- oh? Yuma? Who is this person with you?"

Well, I guess this is the time that Yuma tries to convince the members of Border not to kill me.

"This is Lucca. Until very recently he was a Neighbor of the planet-nation Liberi." Yuma said.

Everyone at the table started for a few seconds.

"Really now?" The guy in the center asked. He had a scar on his face, which was kind of intimidating. "And what might this particular Neighbor want with us?"

"For the most part, I want protection." I said. "I'm on the run from Liberi. I timed my escape so that they couldn't send a portal after me. It'll eventually come back into portal distance though, so I need to protection."

"And you expect us to give you this protection for free?" He asked.

"Commander Kido, while it sounds somewhat ridiculous, Lucca here is actually telling the truth. Besides that, he doesn't ask for stuff without doing something in return." Yuma said.

"I see." Kido said. "And what will you do in return for our protection, assuming we give it to you?"

Well, this is where I have to prove my worth, I guess.

"I have a good deal of information I can give you about the political structure of Liberi. While they're not the only planet-nation out there, they're still decently strong so it helps for you to know what their capabilities are. I'm also proficient enough with a trigger to assist you if you need me to. I also have a black trigger with me and I'm willing to use its powers to help you."

At the table, everyone's eyes went wide. "You're offering the power of a black trigger to Border?" One of the men at the table asked.

I nodded. "That is correct."

The only one who didn't seem that fazed was Kido. "Say I was to force you to relinquish your black trigger in order to agree to accept you into Border. What would you do?"

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, but even if you were able to take my black trigger from me, it would do you no good. My sister is extremely picky when it comes to who uses her. That's why I said I'm only offering you its power. Not the trigger itself."

Behind me, Yuma started. "So that's why you ran away."

"What, why did he run away?" Another one at the table asked. He was kinda stout. And he had a pointy head.

"They wanted to take this away from me." I said, showing them the fingerless glove on my left hand. "This is my sister."

At first glance, it looked like a regular fingerless glove. However, it was coupled with an extra layer of padding where the components of the trigger were placed.

"So that's your trigger." Kido said. "I see. Given your situation, I believe we can extend Border's protection to you as well. However, I have one request before you do so."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Put simply, I want you to enlist as a member of Border. You can choose a faction to join later on. You will have to learn how to use a trigger from Border though."

I nodded. "I can accept those conditions."

"Then we have an agreement."

* * *

As I walked out, Yuma stopped me.

"What is it Yuma?"

"How did Aria die?" He asked, his tone flat.

I grimaced. My sister is still somewhat of a sore topic for me.

"I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't have asked?" Yuma said.

"No, it's alright Yuma. You're my friend. You deserve to know." I said.

 _Flashback_

" _Lucca, are you still there?" Aria asked._

" _Yeah, I'm still here for you, Aria."_

" _It's so dark… I guess this is it though."_

" _Yeah, I guess. I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise to you, Aria." I said, sadness filling my face._

 _A few years after the Kuga family visited us, Aria's illness spiked in severity, leaving her completely bedridden. I couldn't do anything about it, neither could the doctors. She was going to die, no matter what happened. I had come to terms with that fact a few days before she was expected to die. Aria on the other hand though, had different plans._

" _Lucca?"_

" _Yeah?"_

" _Remember what I made you promise?"_

" _You mean taking you with me wherever I go?"_

" _I think… there's a way for you to do that still."_

" _How?" I was confused. How would she pull it off?_

 _Aria forced herself to hold her hands out, positioning it just above her heart._

" _Give me your hand."_

 _I placed my hand between her hands, still uncertain as to what was happening._

 _The next time she spoke was her last time. "It's not the exact same as actually walking with you, but if I do this, then you won't ever break your promise. Alright?"_

 _I understood. This would be the last time we could talk face to face. "Alright. It's a promise. No matter what, you'll be with me wherever I go."_

 _Aria smiled before closing her eyes. I watched as all of Aria's trion found its way onto my hand, before shaping itself into a fingerless glove. When it was finished, the only trace of Aria that remained was the glove on my hand._

 _I looked at my hand. The fingerless glove felt like an extension of me. A quick flex of my hand confirmed my initial suspicion. The glove was actually an extension of me. It was bonded with me. There was no way to take it off. Maybe by cutting off my arm, but I wasn't going to let that happen._

 _As chance would have it, a few weeks later the Liberi military tried to steal Aria away from me. I didn't give them the chance._

 _Flashback End_

"After I got away, I tried to figure out where I could go. I went to your old home in Calvaria, but they said you left for Meeden. So I ended up here eventually after sneaking through Liberi and Aftokrator. I got here through one of the portals while they were attacking, although I got squished by a rabbit while I was falling down. That's why I was at the wreckage.

"I see. So she bonded herself as a trigger to your hand?" Yuma asked.

"Permanently." I said. "I couldn't even hand over the trigger even if I wanted to. I guess this is my way of keeping Aria's promise."

"Wow. You've had it almost as rough as Yuma here." A voice said from behind me.

I turned to see Jin holding a bag of crackers. "Did you want something, Jin-san?" I asked.

"Nah, not really. I'm just here to answer any question that you might have. By the way, want some rice crackers?" He asked, offering me the bag.

I took one. "When Commander Kido said join a faction, what did he mean?"

"Ah, that. You see, Border is divided into roughly three different factions. There's the Kido branch, which puts focus on expeditions and has a hatred for Neighbors, due to the fact that many of them have lost loved ones to them. There's the Shinoda faction, which puts its priority on the defense of the city and its citizens. And then there's the Tamakoma branch, the smallest of the branches that has one policy. 'Not all Neighbors are bad, so let's try to get along with the ones that friendly.' But I doubt Kido would let you join the Tamakoma faction, as Yuma here has already joined."

"What? Why?" I asked.

"Well, it's mainly because the balance of power between the factions is held by how strong each one is. And as black triggers lend a ton of power to a faction already, I doubt Kido would want more than one black trigger outside of his branch."

"So how are the black triggers divided up so far?"

"Well, Kido branch has one, Tamakoma has one as well, which is Yuma's, and Shinoda has zero. There's another black trigger in the base that technically belongs to the Kido branch, but its main purpose is as defense that anyone but the members of the Tamakoma faction can use."

"Why not Tamakoma?"

"That trigger used to be mine. I gave it away to solve some infighting in Border."

"I'm guessing Kido wants me to join his faction?" I asked.

"Probably. I don't think he would mind if you joined Shinoda faction though."

"Ah, I see. I think I've made a decision as to which one to join."

"You're going to join Shinoda, aren't you?"

"Jin-san, did you use your side effect to figure that out?" Yuma asked.

"Well, somewhat. I figured he would join Shinoda faction due to the fact that they don't have any black triggers per se."

"Something like that. Also the fact that if I'm asking for protection, it's only fair that I help with protection as well."

"Well, I'll go talk to Shinoda about this, and you can meet up with him later. I think you can actually still sign up as a new trainee. Enlistment was a couple of days ago, but it's still not too late to join with everyone else."

"Actually, I think I'll just go with you to talk to Shinoda." I said. "Sorry Yuma, I guess I won't be joining Tamakoma with you."

He shrugged. "You'll be fine with the Shinoda faction. They're all good people."

After we parted ways, Jin and I walked into silence before I decided to ask a question. "So what's your side effect?"

"Ah, you picked up on that from earlier."

I shrugged. "I have a side effect also, so honestly I'm not all that surprised to see other people with side effects."

"I see. My side effect is seeing a little bit into the future. What's yours?"

"Enhanced processing time. Pretty much my brains can make analyses of a situation in less than a few seconds."

"Wow. That's a pretty good side effect. Either way, we're here." He said, opening a door before walking in.

The guy inside was one of the guys from the meeting earlier. The one with the short black hair. I pinned him as the second nicest guy on the table at the time, the first one being the one with the glasses.

"Jin. Do you want something?" He asked.

Jin shook his head. "Not me. This guy, on the other hand, does." He said, patting my back.

Shinoda focused his eyes on me. "You're the Neighbor from earlier. Why are you here?"

I nodded. "When told me about joining factions, I asked Jin about it. After some deliberation, I decided to join yours."

A brief widening of his eyes was the only response he gave. "I see. What made you come to this decision?"

"A couple of decisions. Firstly, I didn't think Kido faction would be a good fit for me. Second, I didn't want to create an internal struggle in Border by joining Tamakoma. And third, you guys prioritize defense of the city. That's something I want to help with. If Meeden is to be my new home, I want to be able to defend it."

He smiled. "I see. In that case, welcome to the Shinoda faction."

* * *

 **Woo that's a wrap.**

 **So how is it?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Onto a new chapter of experimentation!**

* * *

You know, if someone told me that a bunch of teenagers pretty much made up one of the strongest teams in Border, I would have laughed at them. I mean, sure Yuma is young, but he's really strong. And he's been learning from his father, so I figured he would be strong. I didn't figure that the other young people at Border would be that strong. Oh how wrong I was.

Shinoda took me away from Border headquarters by car to a… house? Meeden structures look strange sometimes. I guess it was a house. I couldn't figure out what else it might be. Maybe some sort of shop? But you would think that a shop would have a sign on it saying that it was a shop. Either way, on the way there, Shinoda and I had a bit of a conversation.

"So why did you come to Earth for protection?" Shinoda asked.

"Earth?" I asked. Is that the name of this city? Why name it after dirt?

"This world."

"Oh. That's what you guys call it? We call it Meeden." I said.

"Really? I thought that was a just a slang used by some of the Neighbors."

I raised my eyebrow. "Really? Why's that?"

"One of the humanoid neighbors we fought recently kept calling us Meeden monkeys."

I shook my head. "Nah. That's our official name for you guys. And to answer your earlier question about why I came here, it was mainly because I heard that Yuma was here."

"Are you friends with him?" He asked.

I nodded. "Back when he and his father were travelling around the Neighborhood, they stayed at my home for a bit."

"Kuga said you lived in Liberi, the marine nation. Is that correct?"

"Yep. Liberi, where there's water for as far as the eye can see. Back when the Kuga family was staying at my home with me and my sister, they would spend the better part of an hour just enjoying the view. After they left, I lived in Liberi for a few more years before I ran away."

"About why you ran away… you said that the Liberi military tried to take your trigger away from you. Did you ever consider that there might be a chance that they would return it to you?"

I shook my head. "If my black trigger was like other black triggers, maybe. But it's not. When my sister poured all of her essence into this trigger, she made me promise her one thing: That I would take her with me wherever I go."

"I see. You really care for your sister, don't you?" Shinoda's face softened a little bit.

"That and I couldn't take her off even if I wanted to. It's bonded to me. Permanently." I said.

His face held shock for a brief moment before shifting into understanding. "I see. So that's how she's making sure you keep your promise."

"Well," I said with a bit of a shy smile, "it's not like I would ever say no to her."

"I can understand that." He said. "We're here."

* * *

Shinoda knocked on the door before waiting for someone to open it. A few moments later, a guy with his hair pushed back opened the door.

"Oh, General Manager Shinoda. I didn't expect you to be here. Do you need something?" The guy said.

"I'm actually here to drop off this guy." Shinoda said. "Starting today, this guy has joined Shinoda faction, so I decided that it would be best if he came here to meet the rest of the people in the group."

The guy looked nice enough. "Any special circumstances that I should be concerned about?"

"Just one." Shinoda said. "He's a Neighbor. But you can wait for proper introductions."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Jun Arashiyama

* * *

Well, this is interesting. I would have never guessed that the guy that Shinoda brought here was a Neighbor. He kind of reminds me of Karasuma, although that has more to do with his hair than anything else. But that makes two Neighbors at Border now. Yuma, and this guy.

"Well, I'll be leaving you two to get acquainted then." Shinoda said with a wave. "See you later!"

I wave goodbye to him as well before motioning to the guy to come inside. "Come in, make yourself at home."

The guy walked in, looking somewhat confused. "Make myself at home?" He asked.

Oh right. This guy's a Neighbor. They're probably not that familiar with expressions over here. "Sorry. It's just an expression."

"Oh. I see."

"I'm Jun Arashiyama, leader of Arahiyama squad. I guess I'll be showing you the ropes at Border." I said, extending my hand.

The guy took my hand. "I'm Lucca. It's nice to meet you."

"Well, I should probably introduce you to the rest of the squad. Seeing as you're unofficially a member of our group, you can live with me or one of the other guys in our squad."

The guy looked relieved at that. "Thanks. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about living. I didn't exactly think that through when I came here. Although technically, I have to start out as a new member in… C-class? Is that what it's called?"

Huh. Didn't Yuma Kuga of Tamakoma have to do that as well? "In that case, we'll just have to teach you some things about Border triggers before you go to the next training session. Which incidentally enough, is what we help manage."

"Thanks. I have no idea how Border triggers work. It's not like I actively studied them back when I was in Liberi."

"Liberi?" I was confused.

"The world I came from." Lucca replied. "There's a lot of water there."

"Speaking of which, why did you come here?" I asked.

"I'll explain that later when you introduce me to the rest of the squad… it's a bit of a heavy story if you don't mind." Lucca said.

So is there a dark secret behind his running away? "Alright, that's fine. Come on, let's go meet the rest of your new friends."

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person

* * *

Currently, Arashiyama squad was having lunch at their meeting house. While they met there, they didn't actually live there. It was simply for the sake of meeting together. It did have simulation rooms as well, which was nice when they wanted to practice maneuvers against specific types of enemies. But that was really all there was to it.

Anyhow, they were sitting eating lunch. Their sniper, Ken Satori, was trying to make some jokes while they were eating, but no one was really paying attention to him. Squad leader Arashiyama had been eating with as well when they heard the doorbell ring. He got up to go get it. He was taking a while to get back though. It was a shame that the dining hall wasn't closer to the door. They could have listened in then.

They didn't need to though. A few minutes later, Arashiyama came back with a guy in tow.

"Hey guys," he said, "this is Lucca. As of today, he's been taken under General Manager Shinoda's care. He'll be staying with us until further notice."

All Lucca said was "Hi."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"And Lucca, this is the rest of the squad. This is Mitsuru Tokieda, an all-rounder." A guy with a rather solemn-looking face. He looks like one of those guys who doesn't talk that much unless he has a reason to.

"Ken Satori, sniper." Judging by his face, he likes chatting a lot.

"Ai Kitora, our ace." Girl with hair down to just above her neck. Seems to be analyzing me for certain qualities. Which qualities they are, I can't be sure.

"And Haruka Ayatsuji, our operator." Another girl. Seems nice enough. I can't read anything about her. Weird.

Satori was the first one to get up. "Nice to meet you! Have you eaten yet?"

I frowned. "Now that you mention it, I haven't eaten anything since yesterday."

"Yesterday? What were you doing?"

I shrugged. "Mostly escaping from the Neighborhood to here."

That caught their attention really quickly. "You're a Neighbor?" Kitora asked.

I nodded. "On the run from my home. It's a long story."

"Well, we still have an hour before we need to go out for patrol. We have time."

"I guess I can give a shorten version of the story." I said.

"So what's the short version?"

"I have a black trigger. Liberi, the planet-nation that I'm from, wanted to take it away. I ran away and eventually ended up here."

That drew stares from everyone around the room.

"There's more to this than just the fact that you have a black trigger, isn't there?" Tokieda said.

I nodded. "The black trigger in question was my sister, Aria. A trion powerhouse with a very sick body. I made a promise to my sister before she became a black trigger: That I would take her with me wherever I go. I refused to say no to her."

"So where is your trigger now?" Arashiyama asked.

I lifted my left hand for everyone to see, with my fingerless glove/trigger on it. "This is my trigger, Sword Saint. It's permanently bonded to me, so I can't even take it off."

"I see… anything else that we need to know?"

"Just one thing. I'm officially enlisting in Border as a recruit, so I'm going to have to learn how to use a Border trigger."

"Oh, in that case, one of us can help you with that. Like… Kitora? Would you be willing?" Arashiyama said.

She looked slightly offended at this (what did I do?), but relented. "Sure, I can teach them. But we need to go visit the hospital later."

"Right. We need to check up on Osamu."

"Osamu?" I asked.

Arashiyama explained. "He's one of our friends. He got injured during the Neighbor invasion recently and hasn't woken up yet."

"Oh. I see."

"Jin said that he would be fine though. No worries. Either way, how about we show you how Border triggers work now?"

"Food first. I'm still hungry."

* * *

After I finished eating, Ai Kitora took me to a simulation room (Cool. Wish we had stuff like this in Liberi. Would have been great for trigger practice), where she showed me the different triggers.

"So first off, you have to understand that there are three main specializations. Attacker, Shooter/Gunner, and Sniper. Attackers focus mainly on close range fighting, usually with blades. Shooters and gunners focus on medium distance battles, while the main purpose of a sniper is to pick off targets from a long distance away."

"So what are the triggers that go with each one?"

"I'm getting to that. Attackers mainly use one of two types of triggers: Kogetsu and Scorpion. The kogetsu is a long blade that you have to draw out of a sheath, while the scorpion is a shorter blade that you can manipulate at will."

"Manipulate how?" I asked.

Kitora activated her trigger before explaining. "Normally, you could hold the scorpion trigger like another blade. However, there are other methods of using it as well."

She then willed the scorpion to disappear, before making a blade protrude from her arm. "Scorpions are useful in the fact that you can use them to have blades come from nearly any part of your body."

"I'm guessing that the tradeoff comes in the fact that it's not as durable?" I asked.

Kitora nodded. "You're right. Let's go on to shooters and gunners. Gunners use a weapon to shoot their trion at people, while shooters don't. Instead, shooters create their own bullets with trion to shoot at people. As a gunner, you use premade bullets that are more accurate, but as a shooter, you can control the quality of your shots."

"I'm guessing that doesn't actually cover the trigger aspect of them?" I asked.

Kitora shook her head. "There are four main types of triggers for shooters and gunners. First, there's the asteroid, which is a straight bullet. The next one is the hound, which pursues the targeted enemy. Then there's the viper trigger. The trajectory of the viper's bullets can be controlled. Finally, there's meteora, a trigger that causes explosions. You can also combine triggers to make other kinds of bullets, but that's a lesson for another time. I'm not a specialist in shooting."

"So who is?" I asked.

Kitora thought for a moment. "I would say Arashiyama-senpai and Izumi from Tachikawa Squad. Arashiyama-senpai is an all-rounder, but his main trigger of choice is a gunner trigger, while Izumi-sensei is the top shooter at Border."

"Senpai?"

"Oh, right. You're not used to Japanese customs. We attach a lot of different honorifics to different kinds of people depending on how they're related to us. Senpai is used for people who are either older than us or on a higher level in regards to a topic."

"So would it be accurate to call you Kitora-senpai?" I asked.

Kitora hesitated for a moment before replying. "I guess. But it's not completely accurate. We'll help you learn more about Japanese customs at some other time."

"Fair enough. By the way, can you do more than just one specialization?" I asked.

Kitora nodded. "We call those kinds of people all-rounders. Arashiyama, Tokieda, and I are all all-rounders."

"In that case, I think I'll work on being an attacker and a shooter."

"No interest in sniper?" Kitora asked.

"Not my kind of fighting style." I replied. "Besides, attacker and shooter sound the closest to what I'm familiar with. Especially with my black trigger."

"Speaking of your black trigger, what exactly can it do?" Kitora asked.

"Is the simulation room operating right now?" I asked.

A few seconds later, the room was activated and we were teleported— maybe that's the wrong word, to a city.

"Whoa. This is realistic." I said.

"It's a way for us to practice maneuvers. So are you going to show your trigger?"

I nodded. "Trigger on."

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person

* * *

To say that everyone who was watching the live feed of the training simulation was amazed would be somewhat understating what was going on. As they watched, Lucca's clothes turned black, signaling the trigger change. While that wasn't unusual for triggers, what was unusual was what appeared. Twelve curved blades appeared on Lucca's back, simply floating there, almost like wings.

"Those blades… is it possible that his black trigger is essentially a shooter trigger that uses blades instead of the regular trion bullets?"

"Looks like it."

Meanwhile, in the simulation room, Ai just stared at Lucca.

"So, are you going to test it out?" Lucca asked.

Kitora shook her head. "I'm not going to fight a black trigger. But we can set up some dummies for you to demonstrate."

"Sounds fair."

As the dummies started appearing, Lucca showed them no mercy, with blades spinning around him and following his every single command. It was almost like he was dancing. When he made a slashing motion with his hand, blades followed in the direction he slashed, while pointing at a target sent the blades flying at it. The blades followed his every movement,

"Trigger off."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

As I deactivated Sword Saint, I turned to Kitora. "So are we continuing with the training? Because while I might be an expert at using my trigger, I'm still a novice when it comes to Border triggers."

That snapped her out of her stupor. I can't blame her though. Most people had that kind of expression when they saw Sword Saint in action for the first time. Aria did always want to learn how to dance. When that was taken away by her sick body, I offered to take lessons for her. Even though it wasn't the same as her taking lessons, I would explain to her everything I learned from the lessons so she could try them out when she recovered.

Kitora recovered faster than most though. "You're right. I can still train you in that. After all, there are still some other triggers that you need to learn about. They're not necessary, but they're important to know for when you go up against other Border members."

"Fighting against other Border members?"

"In an official training room or during ranked wars. That's how you rank up to higher level classes as a member of Border."

"Well, we have a couple of days to learn this stuff then."

"Right. I'll beat as much information as I can into you before the next training session at Border."

"Thanks… I guess."

These are going to be a long few days.

* * *

"So that's Osamu."

Currently we were at the hospital, watching one of the patients sleep. Alright that sounded somewhat creepy. In truth, we just spent a few minutes there to drop off some gifts for him. And… get well cards? Is that what they're called? Customs here are strange.

Anyway, I saw Osamu for the first time. According to the Arashiyama guys, he's part of the Tamakoma branch and trying to get ranked up high enough to go on expeditions to find one of his friends that was kidnapped by Neighbors.

Sounds familiar. Liberi had its own hostages from time to time. I don't recall any of them ever being from Meeden, but that may be because I was never part of any of the Meeden related projects.

But yeah, Osamu. He's an interesting guy. Apparently, he was really helpful in fighting against the invasion. Not fighting-wise, but he managed to keep a lot of the members that Aftokrator was targeting safe. Apparently he got severely injured while he was trying to save this one last person.

"Yeah, he's a nice guy. He saved my little brother and sister this one time when a Rad trion soldier snuck through to this side and opened a portal." Arashiyama said.

Wow. That's noble of him.

"How'd he get injured?" I asked.

"I'm not completely sure, but I think he deactivated his trigger just as the people who were chasing him were about to cubify him."

I frowned. "Aftokrator sent out Hairein, didn't they?"

"Hairein?"

"Black trigger user. His trigger turns people into cubes using animals that he makes from his triggers. He's often assisted by another black trigger user who uses portals to go from place to place."

Arashiyama frowned. "I don't know who it was exactly, but I think your description matches the reports that some of our members made."

I shrugged. "It's not important right now. Speaking of which, where am I staying?"

"Oh yeah, that's right! Normally I'd say you could stay at our meeting house, but there's no one who actually lives there. And I think HQ still wants to keep an eye on you before they let you go around by yourself."

"Hmm. I guess that's fair. I mean, I'm still kind of an unknown factor to them."

"Tell you what, you can stay at my place for now." Arashiyama said. "My house has a couple of guest rooms, so you can stay there while we finalize things."

"Sounds good, I guess."

"Great! It's settled then."

* * *

I'll be honest, I didn't expect the Arashiyama family to be so… lively. Personally, I think Jun is a little too attached to his siblings. But I'm not really one to talk, seeing how I almost always stuck with Aria.

That was beside the point though. Right now, I was lying on the bed, trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Aria was with me, at least in some aspect. I guess that I'm going to protect the people, but honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do besides that. I can't imagine being on the run for the rest of my life. What am I going to do with my life then?

Eh, thoughts for another time. I can always figure things out later.

All in all, not a bad start for my very first day on Meeden.

* * *

 **Whew. Chapter 3 finally complete. I'll be honest, I'm kind of disappointed in myself in how I demonstrated the abilities of Lucca's black trigger. It's rather vague, and doesn't really deliver in terms of interaction. My apologies for that.**

 **And before anyone wonders if black triggers can/can't be used in a training room, look back at the large-scale invasion when Enedra got trapped in a training room.**

 **Anyway, same drill, R &R please.**

 **Thanks!**

 **XWX**


	4. Chapter 4

**I put off starting on Chapter 4 until now because I had finals to study for. Now that I have some more time, chapter output will probably increase somewhat.**

* * *

 **POV: 1st Person, Lucca**

* * *

Well, first day as a C-rank member of Border, here I go. At the very least, it was nice of Arashiyama squad to give me some extra starting points so I didn't have to start from scratch. Right now, I was starting at 2000 points.

First thing the trainees ended up doing was combat training. Kitora had me run through some different combat training scenarios with a Border trigger so I had a good idea of what to expect. Apparently, the first day of training they had a downsized Bamster as the opponent to fight. I'll admit, I laughed. A defense-heavy trion soldier as the first training opponent? Easy.

One of the biggest weaknesses of trion soldiers in general was the fact that they all had one glaring weakness: The eye. If it was damaged significantly enough, the trion soldier would essentially shut down. Anyone who recognized that could take down a bamster in less than ten seconds if they had enough power. They weren't very fast, after all.

While the trigger I was currently using was a C-class trigger ("You mean I can't use my black trigger?" "No! Do you have any idea how unfair that would be to other people?"), I had managed to stuff it with literally every single trigger I thought I could use. Which included a kogetsu, a scorpion and literally every single shooting trigger I could stuff into it (Asteroid, Hound, Viper, and Meteora). I also decided to add a bagworm and a senku, an extension for the kogetsu, into it. Everyone had asked me if I wanted to add a radar into the kit as well, but I declined. My side effect was more than good enough to compensate.

But yeah, when I got to the combat training room, I noticed that there were three guys that were trying to stand out among everyone else. I ignored them for the most part. It wasn't like I really cared for the other trainees.

A few minutes later, Arashiyama, who was the guide for the training, called for everyone's attention.

"Everyone, thank you all for coming. I know a few days ago things were difficult, due to the invasion, but for those of you who managed to come back, welcome. For the next combat training simulation, you'll be facing these." He said, waving to the simulator room where another simulated trion soldier had just appeared.

Once again, I found myself dangerously close to laughing my head off. More bamsters. But of course, there's probably a little trick to them as well. I doubt training would just repeat itself over and over again if people would adjust quickly to it. If I were to guess, there's another trion soldier that will pop out of a defeated bamster. At this level, it's probably going to be something like a weakened mole mod that's been made easy for these guys to handle. At least that's my guess. Mole mods are small enough to stuff inside bamsters, after all.

* * *

 **POV Change: 1st Person, Jun Arashiyama**

* * *

Training went well this time around. At least for the trainees who had been here before. All the trainees had to defeat the neighbors presented in the simulation. This time around though, we decided to make it so that another trion soldier would pop out of the defeated one. After the invasion, HQ wanted everyone prepared for that kind of a scenario of some sort.

We weren't going to have them face off against the new models though. Those were tough even for the A-rank members at Border. While the Tamakoma-1 members could all single-handedly take one down without too much effort, the rest of us couldn't exactly do the same.

We could, however, have them face off against the mole mods. Those were easier. Somewhat. We were going to have weakened ones for the trainees. I could see Lucca trying really hard not to laugh though. I guess he's been through this kind of thing before, being a Neighbor and all. Well, he should probably blaze through this pretty quickly and… oh look, I'm right! He's already done. Sweet. So this is what happens when we let Lucca stuff a training trigger with all the possible trigger options that he could want.

Gotta say, I'm impressed. He didn't even bother with fighting the trion soldier inside the defeated one. He just mixed together an asteroid and meteor and blew it up from the inside out.

Maybe we shouldn't have let him stuff all those trigger options inside the training trigger.

A voice popped up from behind me. "You know, I never thought Lucca would ever use a ranged weapon in my entire life. Close-ranged suits him way better."

I turned around to see Yuma Kuga standing there.

"You know Lucca?" I asked.

Yuma nodded. "I met him a couple of years ago back when I was travelling around the Neighborhood with my father. We stayed at his home when we were in Liberi."

"Why did you stay at his place?" I asked, curious. This was the first time that I was hearing about this.

Yuma smiled as he looked down at the training rooms. "Did he tell you about his sister?"

"A little bit." I said.

"His sister let us stay at their home. Lucca was completely against it at first, but the moment his sister begged him, he relented."

I looked at him in surprised. "He spoiled his sister?" And I thought I was attached to my siblings. I mean, sure I loved my siblings, but I don't think I would ever let them bring a stranger home. Alright, I might. I mean, I let Lucca stay at my place.

"You'd probably spoil your siblings also if they were as sickly as Aria was. Still though, Lucca may have spoiled Aria, but Aria was one of the sweetest people out there. She didn't ask for much. She was nice to everyone. The only thing she ever wanted was for Lucca to take her with him wherever he went, once she recovered from her illness."

"I guess that never got around to happening." I said, looking down at Lucca with sympathy. Losing a loved one was always hard. Especially when it was family members that were lost. Kido faction knew that better than any other faction in Border. Part of me is still surprised that Lucca didn't join Kido faction. He actually wouldn't have been that bad of a fit there.

* * *

 **POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca**

* * *

Well, that was easy. Oh hey, there's Yuma. "Yuma, what are you doing here? I thought you were a regular member."

Yuma shrugged. "Somewhat. I'm technically B-rank now, so I guess I'm a regular member. It shouldn't take you too long to get to B-rank either."

I nodded. "I had a couple of good teachers."

"Let me guess: Everyone from Arashiyama Squad?"

"Yeah pretty much." I laughed a bit, scratching the back of my head.

"So how are you liking it here so far?" Yuma asked.

I shrugged. "The food looks kind of strange here. That and the value of money is also strange. I kind of get it, seeing as it's really just a bunch of numbers, but I still think it's strange."

I still remember Kitora talking my ear off about how I had to be careful about the amounts of money that I carried on me at all times. I still don't leave the Arashiyama meeting house unless I have someone that can show me around. Mainly either Jun, Kitora, or Tokieda. Satori kinda just talked my ear off if I was with him. To be honest, it still freaks me out.

"The food here doesn't look as strange as that stuff that you cooked when my father and I were staying at your place." Yuma said.

I'll admit, I was a bit insulted. "Hey!"

"Lucca, you can cook?" Arashiyama asked.

I nodded, while glaring at Yuma skill. No one insults my cooking. "Seafood, mostly. I had to cook for me and my sister for a long time. Being a trigger user doesn't pay that much in Liberi, so I couldn't take my sister out that often. I had to just buy the food and cook it myself."

"Hey, I just said it looked strange. It still tasted really good, if rather spicy."

I still glared.

"You know Lucca, why don't you try cooking for the squad sometime? Kitora likes spicy food. It's not the stuff that you see in Liberi, but you can try making a good dish still." Arashiyama said.

I relented with my glare. "Sure, I could do that. Although you're going to have to show me around the food store. And tell me which one has which flavor. I'd rather not have to go around tasting everything just to find the right dish."

"Alright, sure!"

* * *

One hour, seventeen minutes, and ten seconds.

That's how long it took me to get to B-rank once I started getting onto the solo ranked battles. Honestly, it really wasn't that much of a challenge. But I guess that's to be expected when you stick someone whose proficiency with triggers was rather high with a bunch of guys who don't know that much about using triggers. Although that has more to do with my side effect more than anything else.

I should probably explain more about my side effect. I mentioned to Jin a while back that I had enhanced processing time, basically I could make analyses in a few seconds. To be frank, that's actually understating it. The main reason I could learn how to use triggers so proficiently in such a short time was because of this side effect.

It slowly puts stress on my brain when I use it though, so I have to be careful. When I do use it though, the amount of information that my brain processes increases a hundredfold. One example of this is what happens when I see a bullet flying. If I use my side effect for a few seconds, I can predict almost exactly where the bullet is going to be based on its speed, trajectory, and wind factors. I can also tell when it's going to get to a location. It's only a prediction though. Not an exact guess.

Another use of my side effect is planning out strategies in seconds. Ever since I got to use the Viper trigger, I fell in love with it. It works so well with my side effect. I can literally control the area my opponents can move to and then move in to get them with Kogetsu while they're busy.

But enough about that. After breaking into B-rank, I found myself climbing ranks rather quickly. But I figured it wouldn't last. I wasn't an elite soldier per se back when I was in Liberi. We had our military training, but I was never near the top for anything except for strategy. In a regular battle of skill, I was average at best without using Sword Saint. My biggest advantage in any battle was my side effect. With it, I was able to make complicated plans on the fly. But it wasn't necessarily enough to compensate for actual fighting skills. Right now, I was sitting at about 6000 points.

As I was walking through the hallway, I ran into Shinoda.

"Ah, Lucca. Congratulations on making it to B-rank so quickly." He said.

I shrugged. "It really wasn't a challenge."

"I see. Maybe we should have put you with B-rank right away."

I shook my head. "That would be unfair. Kido said that one of the conditions for my protection was enlisting as a regular agent. That means going through the same process everyone else does. It'd be weird if someone like me was instantly stuck in B-rank, right? I'd rather not have people finding out that I'm a Neighbor out of the blue."

"Right. That's true. Kuga also said the same thing when I offered to make him a regular member right away."

After I stopped talking with Shinoda, I went to the cafeteria where everyone else was eating. Granted, I wasn't actually hungry, I just wanted to sit somewhere.

"That's the new guy…"

"You mean the one who got to B-rank in an hour?"

Oh geez. I feel like I should've seen this coming. I'm pretty sure most people don't rank up this fast.

I finally managed to find a seat where I could just relax for the moment. It didn't really last though. A few moments later, someone familiar sat down in the seat right across from me.

One of the first people that I met when I came to Meeden: Rei Nasu.

* * *

 **POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu**

* * *

I had heard rumors about someone making it to B-rank in an hour, but I had ignored them for the most part. Rumors didn't really catch my attention. Besides, most A-rank members during their enlistment hit B-rank rather quickly. However, when the cafeteria starting buzzing up and talking about the guy in question, I was curious. I had to look.

I nearly did a double take when I saw it. I recognized the guy. It was the same one that our squad had found a couple of days ago at the portal site, the one that I figured out was a Neighbor. If I remember correctly, his name is Lucca.

Curious as to why he was here, I got up from where I was sitting and moved over to the table he was sitting on.

"You know, I'm surprised to see you here." I said.

Lucca raised an eyebrow. "Why is that?"

I elaborated a bit. "I never thought that I would see a Neighbor in a Border uniform. And B-rank already, to boot."

He shrugged. "Kido's condition for my protection involves me being a member of Border. So here I am. But let's not talk about me being a Neighbor. I don't want people hearing about it. Too many questions would be asked. You're Rei Nasu, right?"

I nodded. "And if memory serves, your name is Lucca?"

He nodded. "Yep. As of a couple of days ago, I am a member of the Shinoda faction.

"Why Shinoda? Why not Tamakoma?" I asked. Tamakoma was more likely to take in a Neighbor, after all.

"I'm technically not allowed to talk about it, but there are reasons."

I decided to stop pursuing that subject. If it's supposed to be confidential, I need to keep quiet. Asking him how he fights might be a better idea. He's probably going to be my opponent in a later ranked match. "So how do you fight?"

He didn't even hesitate to reply. "All-rounder. Shooter and attacker."

I was a bit surprised. "Who did you learn from?"

"Literally everyone from Arashiyama Squad." I said.

Well, that explains something. Nearly all of them are all-rounders with expertise in attacking and shooting. "Wait, that doesn't explain what Satori helps you with."

He shrugged. "He was mostly there for sniper pinpointing practice."

"I see."

"Enough about asking me questions though. What about you?"

"Huh?"

"How do you fight?" He asked.

Oh, that's what he meant. "I mainly use the Viper trigger."

"And secondly, is there a reason you seem way more comfortable in your trion body than anyone else around here?"

"What?"

He continued. "Your body. It's hard to notice, but compared to the rest of the people around here, you seem way more comfortable in your trion body."

"How did you know?"

"I've seen enough people to know that there's actually a difference between when they're in their trion bodies and when they're not using their triggers. There aren't that many people who aren't Neighbors that can grow so accustomed to their trion body that they don't even feel a difference."

I'll admit, I was speechless for a moment. "I… I guess there is a reason for this. I do spend a lot of time in my trion body."

"Do you not like spending time in your regular flesh and blood body?"

"Kind of."

"Any particular reason why?"

"You're being too prying." I said, standing up and leaving him to his own thoughts. All the while, I could only wonder how he figured out so much from so little.

* * *

 **POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca**

* * *

Well, that was an enlightening conversation. Something's bothering me about that girl though. And it's not just how comfortable she is with her trion body. It's more along the lines of how familiar her manners seem.

"Ah, Lucca! There you are. C'mon, we're going home." Arashiyama said.

Once we got into the car, Arashiyama drove off. "So, besides hitting B-rank in record time, how was your first day as an official member of Border?"

I shrugged. "Nothing to really say. I might peak at around 7000 points for a while until I learn some more tricks for close range fighting."

"Ah, I see. Did you make any new friends?"

I shook my head. "Not really. I did meet someone that I met when I first got here. Her name's Rei."

* * *

 **POV Change: 1st Person, Jun Arashiyama**

* * *

So I guess Lucca made one friend. At least it's better than nothing. It might take him a while to socialize with people. Who knows? He might even make his own squad one day. But for now, being able to chat with people is nice. Still though, the fact that he met Nasu of all people is pretty cool. I mean, they're both so proficient in shooting.

"Rei Nasu? She's one of the two most proficient Viper users in Border, the other one being Izumi from Tachikawa Squad. Maybe three, now that you've joined. I've never seen anyone besides the three of you use that trigger so proficiently." I said.

"You mean that whole thing with us being adaptable with the trigger as compared to people just memorizing patterns to use?" He asked.

"Yep."

"Huh. That's pretty cool. There's something else that's interesting about Nasu though." He said.

Whoa there. What's he talking about? "What, do you have a crush on her?"

Lucca didn't even miss a single beat in replying. "Not that. It's in how she carries herself. She's so much more comfortable in her trion body than literally everyone else that I saw today. Most people have a slight discomfort, but she's managed to completely eliminate that discomfort. Still, that wasn't the most interesting thing about her."

"What was it then?" I asked.

"How she talked when I asked her about it. It reminded of Aria telling people to mind their own business when they asked if she was sick."

* * *

 **And scene. How'd this one go? I know I didn't really include anything of what Lucca did in Border, but I felt like that would've almost been a repeat of what Yuma did. I don't like being identical.**

 **Also, lack of 3** **rd** **person this chapter hurts my head a bit.**

 **As for Nasu. I've always been under the impression that she's a bit sick all the time. Someone like that would probably earn sympathy points from Lucca, who had a sister in poor condition.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Onto a new chapter. I want to try and focus more on Lucca's interaction with the culture/system here.**

* * *

POV: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"So this is…"

"Fish. There's multiple different kinds. That one's salmon, this here is tuna, over there is bass. There's tons of other kinds of fish in the store. I just pointed out a few." Tokieda said.

Currently, all of Arashiyama squad was out at the grocery store. Right now, I was with Tokieda trying to figure out what I should cook, as well as identifying marine animals for the future. After I hit B-rank, I was officially added into the Arashiyama squad roster as an independent agent that reported to the squad. It makes sense. Too many people in a squad can actually mess it up, after all. And I didn't really want to mess around with a team synergy that has clearly been going on for years.

"Huh. Looks a bit different from the fish that I'm used to seeing in Liberi. How about those?" I asked, pointing at what appeared to be a peeled crustacean.

"That one is shrimp. It's a really popular seafood. And right next to it is crab. It's often used in sushi rolls."

"Huh. I see. I think I remember seeing it a few times. But what about the yellow stuff? The one that's around the stuff with the same tail as the shrimps?"

"Oh, you mean tempura? That's just a layering that a lot of chefs use. It's basically breading over the actual food. It's used for a lot of different foods."

"Huh. That's interesting. I should learn more cooking here."

"Hey Lucca!" I turned to see Satori waving. "We got almost all our other groceries. Are you about ready to go?"

I frowned. I wasn't ready to go quite yet. I still hadn't decided what to get. Wait, I could probably do that really fast. I turned to the guy who was selling the fish.

"Excuse me, could I look at the meat of each fish?" I asked him.

After he agreed to it and put out a bit of meat of each kind, I activated my side effect. One of its better applications for everyday domestic use is its ability to let me see what the texture of the food would be like on my tongue. About eight seconds later, I knew exactly what I would get.

"Can I get these three in a two to five to three ratio? In a total of twenty pieces?" I asked.

The guy just stared at me. "What?"

Tokieda sighed. "One kilogram of this fish, two and half kilograms of that fish, and one and a half of that one."

As we were walking back to the house, Tokieda turned to me. "We need to teach you the whole metric system later."

"Metric system?" I asked.

"It's how weight is measured here." He said.

"Huh. I still have a lot to learn."

"Did you trade stuff like that in Liberi?" Kitora asked.

I shook my head. "We had our own measuring system. I just figured you guys wouldn't know it because it's not the same world."

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person

* * *

At the Arashiyama Squad house, Lucca ended up staying in the kitchen with Tokieda while everyone else went over the most recent information regarding Border recruitment.

"What's the current number of people who've left?" Kitora asked.

"About fifteen people so far. And by the looks of things, more people might leave as well. After what happened to a lot of the C-class recruits, I can't blame them. This is going to hurt recruitment for a while." Satori said, frowning.

"We couldn't have known that they were after the C-class recruits until they started sending in those new trion soldiers. Though it might have something to do with the fact that the recruits don't have an escape mechanism on their triggers."

"How would they know to aim for C-class recruits though? I thought they would go for the agents who actually had proficiency with triggers." Arashiyama said, frowning.

Lucca and Tokieda appeared, with Lucca holding a pot of his freshly-made dish in his hand. "You're joking, right? Strategy in Neighbor wars has always been to go for the least protected resources. That way, you can weaken your enemy and strengthen your own ranks at the same time. That applies to both raw trion and people with higher than average trion ability." Lucca said.

"Huh. You sure know a lot about that." Kitora said.

Lucca shrugged. "I helped plan a lot of defensive countermeasures when I was in Liberi. Most of them involved allocating resources in order to adapt to the situation while I would engage the strongest person that came with the invading force. Usually a black trigger."

Kitora raised her eyebrow. "Why you? You're not exactly in top level physical condition compared to a lot of other people."

Lucca placed the pot down and raised his left hand, which still had Sword Saint. "Mainly because of this. I didn't fight that much with this trigger, but when I got it, I got assigned to frontline fighting. Compared to even other black triggers, Sword Saint is immensely powerful. In terms of power, it's strong enough to compete head-on with Organon."

Arashiyama turned his head in surprise. "Organon? That's one of Aftrokrator's black triggers, right?"

"Yeah. It's easily among their strongest. There aren't many triggers, normal or black, that can compete with its performance. Sword Saint is one of them. But enough about that, have some of this seafood." Lucca said, opening the pot.

The smell of seafood wafted through the air, causing a ton of stomachs to start rumbling.

"Oh man, that smells good." Satori said.

Tokieda started distributing the plates of said dish to everyone. "Lucca got the hang of the kitchen really quickly."

Once everyone got plates of food, they started chowing down on it. A lot of faces went red very quickly, Kitora's and Lucca's being the only exception as they happily munched away at the food.

"HOT!"

"Lucca, what did you put in the dish?" Arashiyama asked, gasping for water. He had never tasted anything so spicy in his life.

Lucca stopped eating and thought for a moment. "Umm, the fish that we got today, some of the green onions, this one sauce which I don't remember the name of, and some of the fuoco seasoning that I brought with me from Liberi."

"Fuoco seasoning?" Satori asked, reaching for a cup of water as well.

"Liberi specialty seasoning. It's actually somewhat hard to come by, as the ingredients are rather tough to get. It's this mix of crushed fish eggs, peppers, and a small sprig of this one herb that grows on the smaller islands that circle the main city."

"It wouldn't happen to be a super spicy herb, would it?"

"Well, I wouldn't really call it super spicy…"

Once everyone had downed enough water to the get the spicy flavoring out of their mouth (Kitora being the one exception), they all took a breath.

"Lucca, don't use that sauce again." Ayatsuji said.

Lucca's face was confused. "Huh, why?"

Arashiyama's face was surprisingly grave. "Well, the dish was good, but I think our tolerance level for spicy things isn't at the level needed for the dish."

"Excuse me?"

"Minus Kitora."

Lucca's face brightened a bit. "Oh, in that case, why don't we save this so Kitora can have something to eat for next time?"

Kitora had a small smile on her face. "I think I'd like that."

After dishes had been put away, everyone got down to look at recruitment information once again. Before that though, Tokieda had a question for Lucca.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Tokieda

* * *

Something that Lucca said didn't make sense earlier. He said that he was assigned to frontline fighting after he received his black trigger, but I don't get what happened.

"Lucca, you said that you fought on the frontlines after you received your black trigger, right?"

"Mhmm. Yep, that's right."

"Why did they try to take away Sword Saint?" I asked.

It didn't make sense. They had a guy who was perfectly compatible with the trigger, a genius at it even. And then they tried to confiscate his trigger. He should have been fine as a soldier otherwise.

Lucca's face seem to have a drained look to it after I asked the question though. "They thought I wasn't good enough."

Kitora frowned. "That doesn't make sense."

Lucca explained. "They had their doubts about my ability before. I was never a top soldier in Liberi. When my sister became Sword Saint, they only let me keep her at the time because they were unwilling to cut off my arm just to try and get the trigger. That's why they put me on the frontlines... for a bit."

"What happened?" Arashiyama asked. Everyone seemed to have interest in what happened to Lucca.

"The first couple of weeks that I was using Sword Saint, it was fine because I could fend off pretty much anyone. But that was mostly because most of the invaders weren't that strong. One week, Aftokrator invaded. They sent one black trigger user. Viza, user of Organon." Lucca clenched his left hand into a fist.

Organon. Lucca said that Sword Saint was on the level of Organon before we ate. I pieced together the information quickly. "You fought against him and lost."

Lucca nodded. "We didn't expect Aftokrator to use something as strong as Organon. I guess they heard about how we had been repelling invaders week after week. The moment I lost, Viza went off to support his allies. They made off with lots of trion and killed a large amount of people. I couldn't do anything about it because my trion body was gone. After that battle, I overheard a conversation saying that they were going to try and find a different user for Sword Saint. That's when I made a run for it. I couldn't let them take it from me. I made a promise to Aria, after all."

"And you don't break your promises." Arashiyama noted.

So that's why he's here now.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

Well, first day as an official member of Arashiyama squad. I'll admit, red was never really my favorite color. But given the squad I was officially a member of, I pretty much felt obligated to take up the uniform with the rest of the squad.

But that aside, I'm more interested in the whole money system right now. The currency itself makes sense, but using paper? What's the point of that? I figured it would be better to keep things conveniently light, but it still doesn't make sense. I mean, its paper for crying out loud. For all we know, someone could just be mass producing these pieces of paper and getting all the money in the world that they want. I don't get it at all.

I was standing in front of a vending machine, which was part of why I was currently trying to figure out the money system. Don't get the wrong idea. I could pay for it. I was just confused by the monetary system.

"You know, there are other people waiting for you to use the vending machine." A voice said behind me.

I spun around to see Rei Nasu once again. Still in her trion body too. And looking way more comfortable in it than almost anyone I know. Neighbors included.

"Why would they be waiting? It's not like there's a line to use the vending machine, is there?" I asked.

"Well, it's really awkward to get in the way of someone who's using the vending machine or trying to decide what to get from the machine."

"Oh." Makes sense, I guess. I decided to buy a drink. "I'm still trying to figure out the whole monetary system. It doesn't make sense."

Evidently, she was confused. "How so?"

"It's paper for crying out loud. How does paper have more value than coins? I mean, for all we know, someone could be mass-producing the paper and getting rich. It doesn't make sense."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

I'll admit, I had to stifle a little bit of laughter when Lucca asked that question. But at the same time, it makes some sense why he would ask that question.

"Well, if you don't want to look like an idiot in front of everyone, how about we go sit down and I explain a bit about it to you."

Lucca looked at me curiously. Which was quickly making me uncomfortable.

"You sure you want to help me? I mean, you did seem kind of peeved when I started asking you all those questions last time."

Did he really have to mention that? "Just stay away from that topic and we'll be fine."

"Hey, can you blame a curious mind?"

I glared at him. "You know that I'd rather you drop the topic?"

He raised his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright. I won't pry."

I have to admit, Lucca's new uniform seems pretty well-fit on him. Red doesn't really seem to be his color, but aside from that, it looked good on him. But don't get any ideas. I don't like him that way.

We found an empty table quickly enough. After we sat down, I got down to explaining the monetary system to Lucca.

"Do you have any paper money with you?" I asked.

Lucca nodded before pulling out a bill. "I carry some with me wherever I go."

"It's a good idea. You never know when you might need to pay for something." I said.

"Applies to literally every single aspect of life." Lucca muttered under his breath.

I had to admit, that was pretty true. I took the money, pointing to some parts of it.

"Money is standardized. It has to be exact. And you can't just print money and instantly become rich."

Lucca was confused. "Why not?"

"Because of inflation."

"Inflation?"

"Basically, too much money in the system and the price of everything skyrockets, making it so that other people can't buy stuff, which sends the economy into a tumble."

"Huh. Bartering seems way easier." Lucca commented.

I was confused. "Did you do a lot of bartering back at home?"

Lucca nodded. "Let's not talk about it here. It'll probably be better to talk about it somewhere else, like maybe a coffee shop?"

"Are you sure you should be tossing around confidential information?" I asked. It seemed somewhat strange that he would be so willing to let out information regarding his past.

Lucca shrugged. "It's technically not confidential. I just don't talk about it at base here because I don't like people eavesdropping or accidentally picking up information that they'll remember. People are about twenty times more likely at Border to pick up information by walking around compared to somewhere out in public, like a coffee shop. The only chance that we get overheard there is if some guy with an enhanced hearing side effect picks up what we're saying. And last I checked, there are only about five people with that side effect right now, one of which is in Border, the rest live in the city as regular people."

I was skeptical. "How did you figure this out?"

"My side effect. Essentially, I notice details and use said details to make educated conclusions about stuff. It's always active, but I can improve its performance for a short period. For example, that guy over there with the cropped brown hair has an interest in the girl over there with a ponytail."

Is he making this up? "How can you tell?"

"His eyes. They always slide over to her anytime he thinks that she's not looking in his direction. Those eyes have the look of 'should I ask her out?' It's actually pretty obvious if you just glance over."

Alright, maybe he's not making this up. "Is that how you figured out about my condition?"

Now it was his turn to look somewhat confused. "I can't diagnose whether or not people have medical conditions through their trion bodies. I just noticed that you were really comfortable in your trion body compared to all these other guys around here. And even some other guys that I know back home. But that aside, coffee?"

As tempting as that sounded, I really couldn't. "Sorry. I can't."

Lucca's eyes immediately took on a concerned look. "Does it have something to do with your medical condition? How bad is it?"

I think this was the moment where I felt like Lucca was prodding way too far for my liking last time we talked. But the amount of concern he's showing is surprising.

I shook my head. "It's not fatal, if that's what you're asking."

He sighed. "Well, that's a relief. But that still doesn't answer how bad it is. Clearly it's not too bad if it doesn't affect your actions when you're in your trion body, but it probably has some level of impact on your regular everyday actions if you're refusing coffee at a public facility."

"How do you know all this?" I asked.

"Because the Liberi military never let my sister use a trigger due to the fact that her health was bad enough that it would affect her if she ever tried to fight."

"Liberi?" I asked.

"Country where I was from."

On second thought, I might just take him up on his offer. The rest of our squad is getting off for the rest of the day as well. There's a lot I want to know about where he's from. "You know, I think I'll take you up on your offer for coffee."

Lucca looked at me, somewhat confused. "And the reason for this change of mind is what?"

"Curiosity."

"Ah. Well, in that case, let me just contact Arashiyama and tell him that I'm going out for some coffee and we'll be off."

Coffee sounds pretty nice.

* * *

 **I guess that's a wrap for this chapter. Really though, I had even more to this chapter that I could've written, but I'll save that for chapter 6.**

 **I'm not really satisfied with how this went, but I'll stick with it for now.**

 **As always, constructive criticism is very much appreciated.**

 **XWX**


	6. Chapter 6

**This is basically a continuation of where I left off last chapter.**

* * *

POV: 3rd Person

* * *

The moment Lucca left one of the entrances to the base, he deactivated his trigger. The red uniform disappeared, replaced by a black jacket and white shirt, as well as a pair of jeans.

Lucca looked over at Rei. "Not turning off your trigger?"

"I'll wait until we get closer to the shop. The less effort I need to exert in my regular body, the better."

Lucca stored that information away for later. Few details were so insignificant that he would ever leave them out.

As Lucca and Rei started walking to the coffee shop, they were completely unaware of the fact that they were being followed by six people at once, who incidentally had all decided that there was something suspicious about their squad member walking around with other squad member. Some of them did have their reservations though.

"Are you sure we should be stalking them?" Kitora asked. "I doubt Lucca's going to like it if he finds out we're following him."

"Oh come on Kitora. It'll be fine." Satori said.

"I still don't understand why you all decided this was a good idea. Or why I was dragged into this also." Kitora said, referring to everyone in Arashiyama Squad and Nasu Squad.

"Hey, it's important that we keep an eye out for our own squad members, right? And this is the closest that Lucca has gotten to being on a date." Satori said.

"Still, it doesn't take all of us! And why do you care so much about whether or not he's hanging out with a girl?"

He looked mischievous. "Hey, supporting our team is a good thing."

Kitora sighed. She was never really one to understand Satori's train of thought. Instead, she turned to the next member of the squad. "What about you, Tokieda-senpai?"

"I'm concerned. Lucca's never actually travelled around the city without one of us accompanying him before." Tokieda said.

"Alright, that's actually a legitimate reason." Kitora said. At the very least, it made sense that Tokieda was concerned for Lucca, as he interacted the most frequently with him.

"I'm taking him back home later." Arashiyama said.

"I guess that one works also. But it doesn't explain why we're stalking him right now, Arashiyama-senpai." Kitora asked. He pretended he didn't hear the question.

"I'm worried about Nasu-senpai going off with a Neighbor like this." Kumagai said, concern on her face.

"How do you know that Lucca is a Neighbor?" Tokieda asked. Last they checked, the information wasn't released to all of Border, although it technically wasn't confidential.

"We met him when he first came here. He was stuck under one of those new model Trion soldiers at the time and we got him out. We figured out he was a Neighbor a moment later when another one of the new models came through the portal to attack us. He destroyed it with one shot."

"Huh. That's interesting."

"That reminds me, why are you here Akane-chan?" Arashiyama asked.

"Because I want to make sure this goes well for Nasu-senpai." She said. "That and the coffee shop has some good soft-serve ice cream."

Kumagai looked exasperated. "You and your ice cream."

Kitora thoughts ran something along the line of "My coworkers are crazy."

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

Once we were about a five minute walk away from the shop, Nasu deactivated her trigger. As her trion body was replaced with her regular one, which pretty much looked the same except for the fact that she was wearing a blue cardigan over a plain yellow shirt instead of her Border uniform. Which was fine by me. We looked like completely normal people.

The moment she deactivated her trigger though, she looked exhausted. She might've collapsed too, if I hadn't caught her.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

She nodded. "Just give me a moment."

A moment later, she recovered and we started walking over to the coffee shop. As we were walking, I kept my side effect trained on her, watching to make sure she was really fine. After about two minutes of being sure that she was fine, I deactivated it. Gave me a bit of a headache though.

Nasu noticed me rubbing my forehead. "Are you alright?"

I nodded. "Small headache. Nothing to worry about."

Physically speaking, her body was somewhat weak, but it was technically healthy. There must have been some other condition that kept her body weak though, otherwise she wouldn't be acted the way she did.

After Nasu ordered some coffee for us (I was still learning how to read stuff), she sat down at a table while I waited for the coffee. Once we got that, I brought the coffee over and we started chatting.

"So, what do you want to talk about?" I asked.

"Well first things first, I'm curious. Where are you from?" She asked.

"Ah. I'm from Liberi, the marine nation."

"And you guys bartered?"

"Yep. We didn't have a real monetary system. We just traded based on what we did and didn't have. Payment in the Liberi military pretty much consisted of us getting small allocations of certain resources, which we would use to trade with other guys."

"Oh. Why did you leave?"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

I'm pretty sure Lucca was about to answer, but then he suddenly stopped and looked over my shoulder, facepalming himself as he saw who it was.

"Could they really not give me a break?" Lucca asked.

"What?" I asked.

"Don't turn your head, but literally all of Arashiyama Squad is about twenty meters away, trying to look inconspicuous, as well as your own squad."

I took his word for it, but I didn't understand what the problem was. "So? Akane-chan likes the soft-serve ice cream that they have here. And the rest of the members in your squad might just be here for a small break."

Lucca shook his head. "Nope. Not a chance. They're here to spy on us. I can tell that for sure. The way Satori's eyes seem to lose focus on anything the moment I look his directions is a clear indicator. Same goes for everyone else there. Satori's is just the most obvious. Although Kitora looks like she doesn't want to actually be here."

I'll admit, I was a bit irritated. The first time I get a breath of fresh air in my regular body in a while and I'm being spied on. Almost like it's that first date where your friends spy on you just to see how it goes.

"Should we stop talking?" I asked.

Lucca shook his head. "That would make them more suspicious. But I guess it really doesn't matter. Your squad knows that I'm a Neighbor, right?"

I nodded. "We figured it out after we figured that your trigger wasn't Border regulation. Speaking of which, where is that trigger?"

Lucca raised his left hand slightly, showing me the fingerless glove that he was wearing… no wait. The glove isn't on his hand, is it? My eyes widened as my gaze went from the glove to the fingers. There was no seam or sleeve where the glove ended and the finger began. It was like…

"You noticed it, didn't you? That this glove is grafted onto my hand, right?"

I nodded slowly, not sure of the meaning behind this. It was somewhat horrifying though. "What did the military do to you?"

Lucca shook his head. "The military didn't do this to me. I willingly let it happen?"

"But what is the glove?"

"Besides being a trigger?" Lucca asked. After getting a nod from me, he continued. "It's also the last memento I have of my sister Aria."

"Last memento… as in what?"

"I'm technically not allowed to say what this actually is." Lucca pointed out.

"Wait a second. You don't mean that glove is a—"

"Yes, it is." Lucca confirmed.

'Black Trigger' were the words left unspoken, but I understood well enough what he meant. After all, there's only one way to make a black trigger. And they're technically supposed to be kept secret from the public.

"So that's why you're in Border now?"

"Yep. The deal I made with Kido. I join Border as a regular member and offer the power of this trigger in exchange for protection."

"That's an interesting deal."

"Yep."

"So what have you done since then?" I asked. He couldn't just have been working as an agent that entire time."

Lucca shrugged. "Not much really. Just learning the culture here and occasionally cooking for my squad."

"You can cook?" I asked, somewhat incredulous. A Neighbor moves here from and he already knows how to cook?

"Hey, I did it all the time back when I was in Liberi. Cooking styles may change from place to place, but the tools remain relatively similar."

"Who did you cook for?"

"Mainly myself and my sister."

His sister. He hasn't really said that much about her. "Can you tell me more about your sister? You said she was sickly, but you didn't really elaborate."

Lucca shook his head. "I'd rather not. Same way you would prefer not to talk about your condition."

"Oh…" I guess that's fair, but I really want to know more about her.

"Although," My head perked up when I heard him say that, "You do remind me of her somewhat."

I was curious. "How so?"

"The way she told people to mind their own business when they asked her if she was sick. You respond in almost the exact same way" He said.

I took that information in, not sure what to make of it. Maybe that's why he was willing to talk with me. My thoughts were so focused that I didn't even realize that I almost collapsed. Lucca, on the other hand, had noticed almost right away and had ran over to steady me before I fell.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"Are you alright?" I asked.

Rei nodded. "Sorry. I'm just exhausted from being out for so long…"

"Does this happen a lot?"

"Only when I go out for too long. It's why I decided at first not to get coffee with you."

All of a sudden it made sense. When we're off duty, we're supposed to have our triggers deactivated so people don't immediately identify us as agents if they think we're familiar. That's probably why I don't see Rei outside at all. It would also explain why she waited so long before turning off her trigger. Going out without her trion body must put stress on her physical body. Normally, a flesh and bone body could take on that strain, but with her weaker body, it must exhaust her faster.

I shook my head. "It's alright. We should probably get you back home now."

As I looked around, I noticed that the shop was suspiciously devoid of any Border agents, stalkers included. Weird. But that doesn't really matter right now. What matters is getting Rei back to her home. What would be the best way though? I could probably carry her, but that might not be the best option for us. While my sense of direction is really good, I'm still not adjusted to Mikado City. It hasn't even been a week since I got here, after all. In fact, it's only been five days. Getting her back faster is better, so maybe some other method would work. Not sure what though.

"What's the fastest way to get back to your place?" I asked.

"Maybe a taxi?"

"Taxi? What are those?"

Rei looked at me somewhat incredulously. Well, as incredulous as an exhausted girl can look. "You're telling me that it's been a week since you got here and you still don't know what a taxi is?"

"Hey, give me a break. I don't travel outside of Border that often. So what is a taxi?"

"Basically they're cars driving around that you can get into to get to places. You just need to pay for them."

"And they know how to get from place to place?"

"Once you give them an address, yes."

"Huh. Never knew that. That's convenient."

I took her by the shoulder, carrying her outside where I waited for a taxi.

"Wait a second, what do they look like?"

Rei just pointed one out. Which was conveniently located close by. Suspicious.

Once we got in, she gave the driver the address and we sat in the back, just waiting for the driver to get to said location. Once we got to said place, I paid the driver and helped Rei out of the car, helping her walk to the door. I'll be honest, I was a slight bit ticked with the person who opened the door.

"Where exactly did you guys go?"

Yuko Kumagai looked at me confused. "What?"

"Don't give me that. You guys come to the same coffee shop as us to spy, and then you disappear into nowhere? I mean, come on! Where did you guys go exactly?"

"Umm… well… we kind of decided to go back after a while? I mean, you two were just talking, so we figured we could leave you be, I guess."

I sighed. It didn't explain the conveniently located taxi earlier, but I guess I can figure that out another time. For now, getting Rei back safely was all I was really concerned about.

"Whatever. Just help me out here and get her to a bed so she can rest."

Before I left, Rei asked another question. "Hey, Lucca?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we talk more often? I really enjoyed talking with you." She said.

I thought for a moment. "Pretty sure it was more of an interrogation instead of a chat."

"Alright, that's true. But next time it'll be more of a chat, alright?" She asked.

I thought about it for a moment. Talking was fun, but going to the coffee shop again was probably a bad idea, seeing as Rei collapsed there earlier and it was kind of a hassle to carry her all the way back. Chatting at Border wouldn't be that great of an idea either, seeing as we were technically working at that time and professionalism was a must at work. Not to mention I would probably never hear the end of it from Satori.

"Any places in mind?" I asked.

Rei must have been reading my mind, because she had an idea right away. "How about you come and visit me here?"

"Come again?" Did I hear what I think I heard?

"I mean, it would be helpful if someone else could come by when Kumagai isn't around. And sometimes I just need a bit of casual conversation."

"I was under the impression that the two of you lived together." I said.

"We do, but I can't work every day."

"Huh. I guess I could come by." It'd be a good idea to check up on her every once in a while if possible.

"Great! It's settled then."

"I guess. I'll see you later, Rei."

What did I just agree to?

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Yuko Kumagai

* * *

After Lucca left, I turned to talk to my squad leader. "Nasu-senpai, are you sure you're alright with this?"

She was confused. "What do you mean?"

"He's a Neighbor, he calls you by first name, and you'll be home alone with him. None of which are good ideas." I pointed out.

"He's also a really nice guy who's suffering from culture shock. Besides, I want to know more about him. He's really interesting to talk to."

Know more about him… she doesn't mean that, does she? "Nasu-senpai, do you have a crush on him?"

Said squad leader's face almost turned bright red. "No! Well, maybe a little bit… but it's not like that!"

I sighed. If she was going this route, at the very least I could try and make sure she wasn't hurt during it. "Just… be careful, alright? I don't want you hurt or anything like that."

"I think you might be worrying too much about this."

No, I don't think I'm worrying too much.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

The next day at our operations room, I had a few choice words to say.

"Really guys? Spying?" I asked.

The rest of Arashiyama squad looked rather abashed at being berated by me, seeing as I usually wasn't the one doing the berating.

Satori was especially nervous. "Umm, what are you talking about?"

"Come on. You guys were in the same coffee shop, spying on us. Why in the world would you do that?"

"Would you believe that we just wanted to grab some coffee?"

"Not a chance. Especially not when you actively try to look inconspicuous. It makes you look way more suspicious."

"Huh. So don't try too hard to look inconspicuous. I'll remember that next time I need to spy on someone."

…

"Ok fine, I'll stop spying."

I sighed. My squad is crazy. "By the way, you guys didn't happen to order a taxi, did you?"

Arashiyama answered that question. "That would be Kitora. She figured you could use a way to get back to the house. We thought the two of you could use a little bit of privacy."

"What do you mean, privacy? It's not like we're a couple!"

"Oh come on, there's no need to—"

The phone started ringing, which stopped the conversation for the moment. Arashiyama went over to pick up the phone. After a few moments, he hung up. "That was the general manager. The press conference is starting in a few minutes."

"Press conference?" I asked.

"Basically a bunch of news reporters ask Border some questions. Mainly about the most recent invasion." Kitora said.

"Oh yeah. That invasion. There were 15 agents that quit, right?" I asked.

"Numbers were updated. We're at 20 people who quit." Ayatsuji pointed out.

"Not to mention six people died and 32 trainees were kidnapped." Tokieda said.

"Let me guess. Rabits?"

"Yes and no. The trainees were kidnapped by the rabits, yes, but there was a humanoid Neighbor that invaded the base to disrupt our situation. That's the six deaths that happened."

I was confused. "How'd the Neighbor get in? You need proper trigger identification to get in."

"This one used the air vents, from what I heard."

I frowned. "Air vents?"

"Apparently his trigger lets him transform into a gaseous state."

Wait a moment… "Neighbors send at most two people with black triggers. And Hairein was one of them, which meant that the other one that usually accompanies him was there as well. That already adds up to two. The gaseous trigger is also a black trigger. Did the portal trigger user not appear?"

"If I remember the reports correctly, agents actually engaged with a total of four black triggers."

"Four? What happened to Aftokrator to make them that desperate?"

"We're still trying to figure that out."

Huh. "Should we check out the press conference?"

"Sure, I'll turn on the television." Arashiyama said.

With that, he flipped on the television and we all watched the press conference.

* * *

 **Pretty sure this was a pretty awkward chapter, especially in flow and such. Hopefully I won't do too bad next chapter.**

 **As always, R &R**

 **And please don't say something along the lines of 'next' or 'next please'. That is easily one of the most pointless reviews someone can leave, due to the fact that it's not all that useful for figuring out what I can improve on. I want criticism, not just people asking for more stuff.**

 **XWX**


	7. Chapter 7

**Sometimes, I wonder what I'm doing with my life. It's always a question of when inspiration strikes and how it will strike.**

* * *

POV: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

The press conference was, for a lack of better words, boring. None of it was new information to me, which meant that the only thing to look forward to were the questions of the people there. Hopefully the questions would be intelligent.

"That concludes the conference. You will find more in-depth data in your handouts. We will now answer your questions."

"This is the part where people start venting, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yep. Welcome to the public, where everything is either a hate attack or a criticism." Kitora said drily.

The first reporter, a rather plump man, stood up to ask a question. "Because there were victims inside of Border itself, we must ask how well Border can actually defend itself. What do you have to say about that?"

"You try dealing with a trigger that can change into a gaseous form at any given moment." I muttered.

"Hey, it's not like they're aware of the existence of black triggers." Satori said.

I was a bit surprised. "They're not?"

"Nope. You might want to pay attention to the press conference. Netsuki is about to say some stuff."

We all turned just as he started explaining his reasoning. "Look at your handout. The scale of this attack was almost eight times as great as the first time Neighbors attacked us four and a half years ago. When that happened, 1200 people died and over 400 people disappeared. This time, there were only 6 deaths and 32 people missing. The invasion was eight times greater than before, yet we only suffered 1/40th of the losses suffered in the first invasion."

"Huh. That's impressive." I commented. "You guys have really come a long way if that's the situation."

"Well, it has been four years since invasions started happening. We would be rather pathetic if we were still suffering the same rate of loss."

"That's fair."

As we went back to the news, my brained tuned out most of the things they were asking when one of the reporters asked a very serious question.

"If trainees were targeted, is it possible that they knew that trainees cannot escape in any given situation?"

Netsuki paused for a moment before continuing. "They are only allowed to use their triggers inside HQ. It should be impossible for the Neighbors to find out."

The reporter's response seemed almost deliberately paused. "More than a month ago, a local junior high school was attacked by Neighbors. We have eyewitnesses who say they saw a trainee using a trigger. Do you think information was leaked to the Neighbors then?"

The pause was almost deafening.

"It couldn't be, right?" Arashiyama asked, shocked.

"What do you mean?" I was curious.

"That was when Osamu was defending the school from the Neighbor attack. It was outside of the restricted zone, so we didn't see it coming until the alarm was sounded."

"Osamu was a trainee back then?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yep."

I frowned. "Portals can't appear outside of the restricted zone normally. Do you know what caused it?"

"We found a bunch of Rads later. You know, the small trion soldiers."

I frowned. "Then the chance that they find out about the lack of escape functions on the trainee trigger is nearly 100%. Rads are also really good as spies. The chance that Aftokrator misses a detail like that is practically nonexistent."

"But your trion body would have to be destroyed in order for them to find that out."

"Oh… oh no."

I turned to Kitora, realization dawning on her face.

"What?" I asked. "Did you remember something?"

She nodded grimly. "Osamu wasn't the one to defeat those trion soldiers. It was Kuga. He told me when we were monitoring Kuga's progress as a trainee."

"So if Osamu fought them first and ran out of trion…" I started.

"Then it's more than likely he was forced to revert back to his regular body after it was destroyed by the trion soldier." Kitora finished.

Bingo. Aftokrator knew. There's no way they couldn't have.

As we discussed this, Tokieda cut us off. "Guys, you might want to see this."

As we all turned our heads back to the television, I couldn't help but feel my eyes widen as I recognized the guy on television. Granted, last I saw him, he was in the hospital, on a bed, completely unaware of his surroundings.

"I am Osamu Mikumo. I am a trainee, who about a month ago, used his trigger at his school. If there are any questions, I will answer them personally."

As he spoke, I finally noticed General Manager Shinoda in the back standing up, probably to defend Osamu. "Please don't blame our agents on your current knowledge. His rulebreaking was dealt with more than a month ago. The problem is over."

As Netsuki also tried to rise to his defense, the press overtook him. "He said he wants to speak, let him do so!"

Quite the ruckus they're making.

As they settled down, I noticed Osamu's mouth moving.

"What's he saying?" Kitora asked.

"Something along the lines of 'I might make more problems for Border.' Not sure what that means." I said, reading his lips.

"You can read lips?" Arashiyama asked.

"Comes naturally with the side effect, sadly enough. I sometimes end up reading lips from someone who's trying to be a charmer but ends up sounding like a creep."

"That seems… unfortunate."

"Tell me about it."

"But what did Osamu mean when he said 'I might make more problems for Border?'"

"Well, we'll find out in a moment, I guess."

We all turned back to the screen, watching as Osamu took his first question.

"We were told that you used your trigger at school a month ago. Because you were a trainee, this was a rule violation. Were you aware that your action was a violation of the rules?"

"Yes."

Wow. Straight and to the point.

"Due to this violation, people suspect information was leaked regarding the trainee triggers. Do you believe this to be the case?"

Osamu took a bit of time to reply. Which made me think that the conclusion that I came up with was being reached by him as well.

"Remembering it, there is a chance."

Oh good, he figured it out. Sadly enough, that didn't really seem to be enough for someone in the crowd.

"Do you understand how serious this is? 32 people have been kidnapped! We need more reason than just 'remembering it'."

"I'm not trying to explain everything. Even if I knew that a leak could occur, I still would have used my trigger. That is how bad the risk was at the time."

"Even if it made more victims?"

"Yes. Even if future casualties were possible, it wouldn't have been enough of a reason for me to forget the people that day."

The next few moments of the press conference continued on like this, and I lost interest pretty quickly. At least until I heard a question that actually sounded good.

"How do you plan to make up for the 32 lives that were lost due to you and your actions?"

"I'll return them myself."

My ears perked up at this statement.

"Return them himself? Have you guys been sending people to the Neighborhood?" I asked.

"Umm, that's technically supposed to be confidential, but yeah, there have been missions to the other side. Only top agents though. We don't let new people go on these missions for good reason."

I nodded. "They'd probably get slaughtered. But these missions are confidential?"

"Yeah. The public isn't supposed to know about it."

Kido's voice rang out on the press conference. "Like he said, we at Border are moving forwards with plans to recover those who have been abducted. In fact, we have succeeded in unmanned expeditions to the Neighbor worlds before."

It took me only a second to figure out why Kido was saying what he did.

"So he's pretending to have only started trying out unmanned expeditions. Huh. That's clever. That way, they'll have something else to direct their attention to. Although…"

"What?" '

"We're in charge of enlistment, right?"

"Yep."

"And people are really going to be interested with this expedition. What's the chance that a ton of people are going to enlist?"

The entire team looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well…"

Crap. Our workload just got multiplied. By a very large amount.

* * *

As it turns out, I have the record in Border for hitting A-rank (A/N: I'm assuming the thresholds for each rank are 4000 for B and 8000 for A). After the press conference I decided to hit the ranking matches for a bit, which ended up turning into me getting into A-rank after beating a bunch of people. It took me a couple hours of ranked wars, but I got through it pretty quickly. As of now, I am officially an A-rank agent. I got wrecked the moment I tried to fight an A-rank member though. Kitora personally showed up to pummel me into the ground, which I thought was somewhat unnecessary. And then there was this other guy by the name of Midorikawa who simply outdid me physically. Which is something I'm going to have to work on. On my side effect alone, reaching A-rank was doable. Past that though, I was going to have to rely on a lot more skill if I wasn't using Sword Saint.

After I got off for the day, a thought occurred to me. I could probably go visit Nasu.

Wait, would it be alright for me to appear unannounced? Should I bring something with me? Maybe a small gift or something?

I already figured out directions there, so that's not a problem, but the question is whether or not it would be alright for me to go and appear at her home out of the blue.

Fortunately for me, I ran into the one person that could help me with this question.

"Ow!"

Or unfortunately, as I somehow managed to collide with one Yuko Kumagai I turned the corner.

"Sorry about that." I said, scratching the back of my head awkwardly. It was always a somewhat embarrassing situation whenever I collided with someone, which was actually quite often when I was at Border. I think I collided with at least two people per day. I have no idea how it happens. It just does.

Kumagai wiped the dust off her pants before getting up. "It's alright, it happens."

As we were about to walk by, I realized I could ask her something. "Oh yeah, if I'm going to visit your squad leader, should I bring something?"

I got a curious look from Kumagai. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm visiting for the first time, and I figured I should bring something so I don't feel like an intruder. Any idea of what to bring?"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

The doorbell brought me out of my bed and to the door. I had to wonder though, who was visiting? Kumagai has a key, and Akane always calls before she visits. Maybe Sayoko, but that's unlikely. She usually does voice conference.

My question was answered when I saw Lucca standing at the door with a bag with what appeared to be groceries and a bouquet of different flowers.

Wait a second, flowers?

Lucca seemed to read my mind, as he explained rather awkwardly. "My squad suggested flowers. I didn't know which ones to get so I got a general bouquet. And the groceries were Kumagai's suggestion."

I smiled and shook my head in amusement. "Leave it to my squad member to trick you into buying groceries because she forgot. Come on in."

As Lucca came in and unpacked the grocery bag of its contents, I noticed one product stand out. Lucca noticed my glance almost right away.

"Yeah the canned peaches was the suggestion of your squad member also." He said. I think he noticed the look in my eye because the next thing he said was "You really like canned peaches, don't you?"

"Guilty. You would be surprised how much better they taste than regular peaches." I admitted.

"Well, let's save that for later. I figured I could cook dinner while I'm here. Maybe mix the peaches into something."

"No, don't mix the peaches!"

Lucca looked at me in confusion. "You mean you just eat them as they are?"

I nodded. "They taste really good by themselves."

Lucca just stared at me. Probably thinks I'm crazy, but I'm not going to let him just use the peaches like that. A moment later though, Lucca just shrugged. "That's fine. I have plenty of other things to work with."

Only then did it occur to me what he was saying. "Wait, cooking? You're a guest here. Why are you cooking?"

"I can get bored pretty quickly when I'm off work. Usually, I'm either cooking or dancing. There's literally no place for me to dance and I haven't had a chance to cook for a couple days."

"Oh… Alright. That works, I guess. But what are you going to cook?" I asked.

"Haven't decided yet. Maybe curry. I want to try making it."

Curry doesn't sound bad. Although something doesn't seem right. I know we don't have any curry mix, so how does Lucca plan to make it?

"We don't have curry mix." I noted.

Lucca shrugged. "I figured out the components after a while. I think making it myself will get better results than buying it from the market. I even bought the ingredients to make it."

That is scarily impressive.

"But, it takes about six months to perfect, so I decided to buy the mix this time around. I'll make an actual powder myself in the future. So while I'm cooking, why don't you go ahead and sit down. This shouldn't take too long."

Well that's slightly disappointing. But Lucca's going out of his way to cook, so I should appreciate it how I can. It makes me wonder though.

"Did you do this for your sister a lot? Cook for her?" I asked Lucca as he started chopping up carrots.

Lucca finish cutting up the carrot he was on before answering. "Yeah. Although I cooked more spicy food for her. That was always her favorite."

"Did you ever cook for Arashiyama squad?" I asked.

"Once. The dish in question figuratively burnt their tongues to death." Lucca said, a small smile on his face.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Dish was too spicy for almost everyone except Kitora. We ended up saving most of the leftovers for her because she was the only one besides me who could bear eating something so spicy."

"Do you like spicy food?" I asked.

"Call it an acquired taste." Lucca said. "I came to enjoy it after a while after cooking it enough times."

"What about your parents? Did they enjoy it?" I asked.

I felt Lucca's mood drop significantly upon the moment I asked that question. Did I approach a bad topic?

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

Lucca forced a smile. "It's nothing. I should get back to working on the ingredients. I can't just stop midway."

I think that was the cue for me to shut up for the moment. The tension lasted for a while. A couple minutes later, I heard the door open and Kumagai came in.

"Nasu-senpai, I'm home. Is that curry I smell?" She asked.

"Give it a moment it's going to take another five minutes."

"Oh, alright. Nasu-senpai, can I talk to you for a moment?

The distraction was welcome, seeing as Lucca seemed preoccupied with something. When we got upstairs, I didn't expect the question that I did.

"What happened down there? Lucca seemed almost like he was almost fuming or something."

"You noticed that?" I asked.

"It was hard not to, seeing as you weren't even chatting. I could feel the tension in the air."

I looked away. "I think I touched on something hard for Lucca."

Kumagai had a concerned look on her face. "What do you mean?"

"I asked him about his parents and he seemed to tense up almost immediately. I think he has bad history with them." I said.

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person, Lucca

* * *

Lucca couldn't help the surge of memories that came the moment parents were brought up. It wasn't something he liked reliving.

" _Look at these trion readings from the girl! They're monstrous, easily the highest I've ever seen. And the boy, well, his trion isn't shabby either. Nothing near as good as his sister, but I think he has a side effect, judging from how his eyes haven't stopped soaking in his surroundings. So this is what happens when we cross the genes of our strongest trigger users."_

Lucca and Aria were military experiments from their very birth. Their parents, powerful trigger users, literally cared nothing for them besides their use to Liberi. The only people they could hold on to were each other, as no one else cared for them except for their use.

" _Aria's body is weak. We can't have her using a trigger like this. Lucca's potential is amazing though. His trigger skills may be average, but the speed with which he learns them is tremendous. Not to mention how quickly he's been picking up on battlefield tactics. Perhaps we could have him work as a tactician instead."_

The military was disappointed in Aria, and wrote her off as a failure. It was only through Lucca's begging that the military allowed her to have a home near the base where both she and Lucca could stay. While they wanted to simply harvest her trion organ for use, they needed her alive in order to ensure that Lucca couldn't go rogue. As long as Aria was alive, Lucca could be kept on a leash. A loose one, seeing as they let him take dance lessons and cook, but tight enough that any sign of betrayal could be met with Aria's immediate termination.

Lucca's eyes closed as he remembered the argument he had with the man that had sired him.

 _Flashback_

" _You can't just write Aria off!"_

" _And what would you have her do? The only thing she's useful for right now is a source of trion. No better than any of the hostages that we've taken, even if her trion organ is much larger than everyone else."_

" _Father, please!"_

" _Learn your place, soldier. You address me as our commanding officer or I ignore your pleas. Liberi cannot continue to lose to the stronger nations. Either we make use of her trion or she becomes strong enough to fight by herself."_

" _I'll work double."_

" _Excuse me?"_

" _I'll work at double the rate that I've been currently working. Just please, don't use Aria like that!"_

" _Hmm. Interesting. You would go this far for your sister?" Lucca's father asked. It certainly was a change, seeing as Lucca had never begged or tried to negotiate before. It made him grin on the inside, thinking he had an easy way to keep Lucca working for them."_

" _And farther, if I have to, sir."_

" _Very well. You have one year to prove yourself. You will begin your days as a fully-fledged soldier starting today. I expect many victories to come in the near future. You know what happens if we fail, right?"_

" _Yes sir."_

" _Good. You're dismissed,.. Lieutenant Corporal Lucca."_

 _Lucca couldn't help but grimace at the title from where he was kneeling. "Thank you, sir."_

 _Failure was not an option._

 _Flashback End_

True to his word, Lucca didn't fail to perform. Every single battle he led was met with a victory. Being given such a high rank in the Liberi military on the spot meant that he was not allowed to fail. Aria remembered Lucca looking exhausted every single night after each day. Her relief upon completion of his trial year relieved her to no end, as he could finally take a small break from fighting like every other soldier. After all, leading a military force at nine years of age was no easy task.

Another six months of working as a soldier and Lucca was finally given a leave of absence which would last for a few months. During this time, Lucca finally got a chance to pick up dancing so he could teach Aria, in the hope that she would finally be strong enough one day to dance also.

That day never came.

* * *

 **Sorry for taking so long on this chapter. I've been swamped with college stuff, so focusing on writing was a hassle.**

 **Hopefully I'll be able to pick up my pace as winter break comes closer, although if summer is anything to judge by, that won't be the case.**


	8. Chapter 8

**I hit a small block for Reaching Out, so I decided to get started on the next chapter**

* * *

POV: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

Dinner was eaten in silence for the most part. I did a good job with the curry, so that wasn't a worry. Still though, the silence is somewhat disconcerting. I know I had a moment of mental relapse when Rei asked about my parents, but that doesn't mean it's her fault that it happened.

Rei seemed to have a different opinion regarding that. After Kumagai excused herself, she spoke up. "I'm sorry."

"What?" I was confused.

"I shouldn't have asked about your parents. It was wrong of me to pry." She said.

I shook my head. "It's my past, not yours. It's not like you're to blame for what happened in my past. You were just asking an honest question when I had a bad flashback."

"But I was the one who caused it, so it's my fault." Rei argued.

"Hey, it's not the end of the world if you ask a couple of questions."

"Still, I'm sorry."

I sighed. "Apology accepted."

Hopefully that gets her off of trying to apologize to me again. It really isn't her fault, after all.

"It started out as a project."

I started. "Sorry, what?"

Rei explained. "The reason I'm in Border despite my condition. It was an experiment to see whether or not people with weak bodies would be in healthy condition in their trion bodies."

"Ohh. That would explain why you're so comfortable in you trion body. So anything else you like doing?" I asked.

"Wait, that's it? You spend what feels like forever on figuring out why I'm so comfortable in my trion body and once you figure it out that's it?" Rei was incredulous.

I had a hard time holding back my laughter. Somehow, I did it. "It was the only thing that was really bothering me about you. And it answers a lot of questions."

"Oh, alright…" She still looked miffed. "I do like watching movies also."

Huh? "Movies? What are those?"

She stared at me. "You're kidding. You've been here for weeks now and you still don't know what a movie is?"

I shook my head. "Give me a break. It's only been a couple weeks or so. It's not like that's enough time to learn everything."

"Next time you visit, I'm going to have to set up a movie just so you can learn what it is."

Well, guess that's another thing that's going to be included in my cultural enlightenment.

I could tell that Rei was still feeling a bit uncomfortable, though. And honestly, I couldn't blame her. Even I could feel the tension when I was cooking, even if I was the source of it. Aside from feeling uncomfortable though, curiosity was still emanating from her.

I sighed. I should probably explain things to her. But I think I'll save that for another time. It's too soon to be talking about everything that was ever related to me. It's weird though. I barely know her yet I'm willing to explain so much to her. It is a bit concerning, but I should be alright.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

"You still want to know why I reacted the way I did, don't you?" Lucca asked.

I nodded slowly. "It's just… for someone to react like that when their parents are mentioned is strange."

"Let's just say we didn't get along… at all."

"At all?" I was incredulous.

"Nope. I hated them, and still do to this day."

"Why? What did they do to deserve so much of your hate?"

I've never seen anyone declare such undying hatred for their parents before. It doesn't make sense.

Lucca sighed. "That's… a story for another time. It's getting late. I'll tell you about it later if it still bothers you, but for now, I need to get going."

Oh. "Promise you'll tell me about it?" I asked.

Lucca nodded. "Promise."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

As I walked back to the Arashiyama home, I suddenly heard a very familiar voice.

 _I can't believe you're still holding that much hate for mother and father, Lucca._

That voice… "Aria?"

 _Who else, dear brother?_

I turned around frantically. There was no way she could be here. "Where are you?"

Aria seemed to laugh. _On your hand, silly._

"On my… what?" I looked down at Sword Saint. "So you're telling me that you're a trigger and you're talking to me?"

 _Yep!_

"How did this happen?" I asked.

Aria seemed to shake her head as she spoke (granted, I could only hear her voice, but it felt like she was shaking her head). _No idea. All I know is that my consciousness is somehow stuck in the trigger. I've been trying to talk to you for a while, you know._

I frowned. "That's strange. So you're dead, but in a sense, you're alive also as a mental embodiment of Sword Saint?"

 _Something like that. By the way, the name of the trigger isn't Sword Saint._

I blinked. "What? That's what everyone knows it as, isn't it?"

 _Yeah, but that technically isn't the true name of the trigger. And you haven't been using it to its full potential._

"Its full potential? You mean there's more to- wait, why aren't you telling me the true name? It feels weird calling it 'Sword Saint' now."

 _It's actually called 'Armatus.' Let me explain the whole 'full potential' thing to you._

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person, Arashiyama Squad

* * *

Lucca seemed to be deep in thought the next day when Arashiyama squad was on patrol. So deep in thought that he didn't notice a trion soldier until it was almost upon him.

"These guys are pretty easy for you. What's going with you today, Lucca?" Arashiyama asked as he finished off a bamster.

"Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind." Lucca replied.

"Oh? Care to share it with us?" Tokieda asked.

Lucca seemed thoughtful for a moment. "Sure, I can tell you about it after patrol."

Patrol went by pretty quickly afterward. Once the squad got back to the meeting room, they all sat down as Lucca explained what happened the day before.

"I discovered something about my black trigger yesterday. I haven't been using it to its full potential." Lucca said.

Everyone was confused. "Full potential?"

"Ayatsuji, do you think you could link communication to my black trigger?"

She nodded. "I can. Just hold on for a moment."

After Lucca activated Armatus, Ayatsuji went to work linking the black trigger to the rest of the squad's comlinks. A moment later, everyone started when they heard a voice on their communication link.

 _Testing, testing, can everyone hear me?_

"What the hell? Who was that?" Everyone was shocked to hear the voice.

Lucca sighed. "That would be my sister Aria."

Everything went silent for a moment as the squad registered what he said.

"You said Aria died… right? And this is her voice that we're hearing?" Kitora asked.

Aria took the initiative to explain. _Well, in a sense I'm an AI that's created from Aria's consciousness. But I also have all of Aria's memories, so I'm essentially Aria. It's nice to finally be able to talk to you guys. Thanks for taking care of my brother._

"I feel like it's more of him taking care of us, seeing as he does most of the cooking and cleaning when we meet up at the house." Satori admitted.

"To be fair, the dishes I cook are a lot better than a lot of the dishes that you guys cook." Lucca commented.

Everyone could hear Aria sigh through the communication channel. _And for some reason, you still have that arrogant streak going on with you. I thought we were finished with the whole arrogance thing a while back. Guess I was wrong._

"Ow. Scolded by your younger sister. Harsh." Satori laughed.

"Twin."

"Huh?"

"We're twins." Lucca said.

"All that aside, what is this about the full potential of Sword Saint?" Kitora asked.

 _Well, for starters, the trigger's name is actually 'Armatus'. And there's three modes of Armatus. You're all familiar with the one where Lucca has the blades that he can control at will. There's a second form where he uses one single blade that can cut through anything. The last one is pretty much just using both at the same time, except more advanced. It uses a lot more trion though, so it's a pretty big risk to take._

That piqued everyone's interest. "Sounds like fun. Want to run it by the training room to see how it works?" Arashiyama asked.

Lucca shook his head. "I was actually going to visit Tamakoma today. I haven't seen Yuma in a while. Probably tomorrow though."

"Oh, alright."

Lucca stopped for a second. "Wait, where's Tamakoma at?"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

After getting pointed out where Tamakoma was located on the map, I started walking there. While on the way there, Aria and I had a small chat.

 _I have to say, it's weird how I can hear and see things despite being stuck in the trigger._

"Speaking of seeing things, how exactly are you seeing things? Through the trigger?"

 _Through your eyes, actually. I have to say, that was really nice of you, taking care of that Nasu girl. I've never actually looked at things from your perspective, you know._

I ignored her comment about Rei and focused on what she said about sensory input. "Wait, from my eyes?"

 _And I hear things using your ears. It's actually really weird, given that I'm seeing everything from your perspective, including when you use your side effect. I can't hear your thoughts though, so we're stuck to talking like this for now._

I sighed. "So pretty much when we're talking, I'm going to sound like some nut job because you're stuck in Armatus. Speaking of which, do you even sleep?"

 _Well, I can 'deactivate' for a while. Which is kind of like sleep. Except I have to input a duration for which I deactivate before I automatically activate again. Speaking of which, do you have any idea how weird it is for me to activate and find that you're in the middle of a fight? Or that you're still asleep? Or better yet, waking up as you collide into someone. How in the world do you keep on running into people?_

Leave it to Aria to do things in the most random manner. Oh, is that Tamakoma?

 _I'll leave you to your own thing right now. Talk to you in a bit._

With that, Aria went silent. I assume she either deactivated or isn't going to talk.

I knocked on the door of the run-down building that was perched over the water. A moment later, a huge guy with reddish-brown hair opened the door.

"Can I help you?" He asked.

"Yeah. I came here to visit my friend who's here."

The guy didn't budge. "Who's your friend? I can go grab him right now if you want. It shouldn't take too long."

"There's no need for that, Kizaki-senpai. Lucca's looking for me." A familiar voice popped up from behind the guy.

Yuma appeared behind Kizaki, who decided everything was alright and went back into the house.

"Quite the building you guys here have." I commented.

"It serves its purpose as a base. Come on in, I'll show you around." He said, before motioning for me to go in.

As I walked in, I noted that the inside was well-maintained compared to the outside.

"Any reason for you visiting?" Yuma asked.

"Not really." I said. "Just felt like visiting. Haven't talked to you in a while."

"Ah, I see. So, I hear you made record time for hitting A-rank." Yuma said.

"Give me a break. Getting into A-rank may have been doable, but those guys are monsters."

"Huh. Who did you go up against?" He asked.

"Kitora and this other guy named Midorikawa. Knocked me down a couple of notches without breaking a sweat."

"Ah, Midorikawa. He's good."

"Agreed. I need to get better with using Border's triggers if I want to be able to hold my ground in A-rank."

"Worry about that later. Let me introduce you to everyone here."

We arrived at what I assume is a lounge or living room, seeing as there were a bunch of couches.

"Hey, this is my friend Lucca from the country Liberi. He's an A-rank agent."

I raised my hand in greeting. "Hi. I'm a Neighbor. And part of Arashiyama Squad."

It was rather silent for a moment before a girl with long hair spoke. "Oh. So you're that Neighbor that Jun was telling me about."

I blinked, surprised that she mentioned my squad leader. "Are you two friends?"

"Cousins. I'm Kirie Konami. Nice to meet you."

"Reiji Kizaki." The big burly guy I ran into earlier.

"Kyosuke Karasuma." A guy with thick, curly hair.

"And that's Osamu and Chika." Yuma said, pointing out the other two people there who hadn't said anything yet.

I recognized Osamu from the television, but Chika was a new one. Is she an operator? She seems kind of small for a fighter. Although I guess Yuma is pretty small in that regard also.

"Liberi is the marine nation, right?" Osamu asked.

I blinked in surprise. "You know about that?"

Osamu nodded. "It was on the star map that Replica gave us regarding the nations that were getting close to our world."

"Speaking of Replica, I haven't seen him since I got here. Where did he go?" I asked, remembering the autonomous trion soldier that the Kuga family always had with them.

The silence that followed right after the question was almost palpable, which pretty much confirmed my suspicions.

"Either he got destroyed or was captured during the invasion. Am I right?"

"The latter." I was a bit surprised to see Osamu speak up. "He stopped Aftokrator's invasion by hacking into their terminal and forcing them to warp away. I was there when it happened."

I nodded. "I see. I'm guessing that's how you ended up in the hospital also?"

Before he could continue, another voice appeared.

"Hi guys, I'm back. Oh, Lucca. There you are." Jin said.

"Hi Jin. Were you looking for me?" I asked.

"Yeah, I was. Could Chief Rindo borrow you for a moment?" He asked.

I blinked. "Rindo?"

"The guy with the glasses at that meeting you were at. We're holding a prisoner here and we figured you could be of some help figuring him out." Jin explained.

"Oh, that guy. Yeah, sure. He can do that."

I remembered pegging the guy with the glasses as one of the nicest guys at that board meeting for Border. I figured that it couldn't be that bad if he was asking me for some help. With that in mind, I followed Jin down a couple floors to a different room where two other guys were. One of the guys was Rindo, which was fine. The other guy though, made me really wish that I had declined the request. Especially because I recognized him as someone who I fought against before. Back when I was in Liberi. It's hard to forget about an Aftokrator trigger user when he gave me every single reason to hate him.

Clearly, he remembered me as well. "YOU!" He seemed to back up into the wall.

I grit my teeth. It was everything I could do to not kill him. "Pleasure to see you too… Hyuse."

Both Jin and Rindo picked up on the animosity between us right away. "Umm, maybe this isn't such a good idea. Jin, could you escort Lucca out of here?"

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person, Jin Yuichi

* * *

The moment Jin pulled Lucca out, he burst out in anger. "What is HE doing here?"

Jin was somewhat confused. "Do you know him?"

Lucca took a deep breath before continuing. "Yes, I do know him. Aftokrator has tried to invade Liberi three times since I became its tactical defense coordinator. The second time was just before I ran away from there, while the third time was after I left. The first time though, HE hurt my sister while trying to kidnap her. No one hurts my sister and gets away with it."

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person, Takumi Rindo

* * *

"What is HE doing here?" Hyuse seemed scared for his life.

"Oh? Do you know him?" Rindo asked.

Hyuse gulped. Rindo had never seen him so scared before. Hyuse always seemed to be calm and in control of his emotions, so seeing him like this was a new experience.

"Know him? DO I know him? He almost killed me the first time we invaded Liberi!"

"Oh? What happened?"

He looked away. "Three years ago, we heard about the rise of a tactical genius in Liberi that was responsible for repelling every single invasion that was ever sent there. One of our spies told us about how he had a sister that he really cared for. The general consensus was that if we capture the sister, we would be bound to find cracks in his defense as his sister's welfare would compromise him. I was the one assigned to kidnapping his sister. I managed to sneak in and find the sister, but the moment I tried to take her away, he appeared and nearly killed me. And I don't mean my trigger body. He destroyed that and started breaking my bones out of spite. He was about to start chopping off limbs when a rescue squad arrived to get me away. I was lucky to even survive that."

Rindo blinked in surprise. Lucca had seemed so polite to everyone when he first introduced himself. To see this side to him only made Rindo realize that they really didn't know much about him. And it also made him wary. He needed to inform Kido about this in case Lucca blew off his cap.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"General Manager, can I ask you for a favor?" I asked.

About half a week after I visited Tamakoma, I figured out a way to improve my abilities. My capabilities as a shooter were pretty much top notch, but I needed to work on my close combat capabilities, which is somewhat strange to me still, due to the fact that I never used a medium/long range trigger before I got Armatus. And Armatus barely counts as the kind of trigger now, seeing as I just discovered

Shinoda answered me carefully. "Certainly. Though what I can do for you is probably limited."

"I need someone to mentor me on using Kogetsu." I said.

It took a couple days of deliberation, but I decided that using Scorpion simply wasn't going to work for me. I needed to stick to one close combat trigger. While the options for attacking with scorpion were much more varied, I figured something like Kogetsu would work better for me, seeing as it was closer to what I was comfortable with. I checked with Arashiyama regarding people who knew how to use Kogetsu, and he referred me to Shinoda. Apparently, he's also the strongest person who uses a normal trigger in Border, which is impressive when you think about how many skilled people there are.

I received a frown upon uttering my request. "While I wouldn't have a problem with teaching you how to use Kogetsu, I currently have too many duties as General Manager to do so. I can refer you to one of my former students, though. I'll contact him to make sure he's alright with this, though he shouldn't have a problem teaching you."

I saluted in respect. "Thank you very much, sir."

"Lucca, you don't need to salute to me, or anyone else in Border. We're not that much of a military organization." Shinoda said with a chuckle.

I blinked, realizing what I had done. Damn my old habits from working in the Liberi military. "Sorry sir, old habits creeping up on me. So which agent should I go to?"

"Kei Tachikawa. Leader of top ranked Tachikawa squad and current number 1 attacker in Border."

* * *

 **Couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to end the chapter here, but in the end I decided to. In terms of plot, I think the things I want to work on in particular are as follows:**

 **1) Lucca's Past**

 **2) Friendship with Nasu**

 **3) Training**

 **Hyuse is going to be another thing I'll put more work into later on in the story, as there's plenty of potential there.**

 **I also used this chapter to pretty much retcon Lucca's trigger. I didn't like the previous one. Also, points to anyone who can guess the inspiration for this trigger.**

 **First thing we'll cover next chapter is meeting Tachikawa and learning from him.**

 **Also, in terms of what this story will be following (anime/manga), it's going to be a mix of both. I have a few ideas regarding the later episodes of the anime.**


	9. Chapter 9

**So yeah, time to meet Tachikawa. Also, it just occurred to me that there's no real end goal to Promises.**

* * *

POV: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"Excuse me, I have an appointment with Tachikawa-senpai in a couple minutes. Do you mind letting me in?"

"Tachikawa-senpai having an appointment? I haven't heard anything of this. Are you A-rank, B-rank?"

"Arashiyama Squad."

Shinoda had arranged everything with Tachikawa so that I would take lessons from him, which was really nice of him. Unfortunately, he forgot to account for the very annoying person that was at the door. Who kept insisting that I wait outside while he did a check on what I was doing here. Unfortunately for said person, I was about two ticks away from blowing up his trion body with a meteora or an asteroid. Probably an asteroid. I don't really want to cause damage to the base, even if it can be repaired with trion.

"Those of us in A-rank no. 1 don't have all the time in the world to deal with others. And someone from Arashiyama Squad having an appointment with Tachikawa-senpai is rather suspicious in and of itself."

"Technically, General Manager Shinoda set up this appointment for me."

"All the more suspicious. Do you have any proof that Shinoda set up this appointment?"

At this point, I was losing patience, so I formed about two hundred blocks of trion to aim at him. "Listen here you little piece of shit. You can either let me in and we can talk through this civilly, or I can blow up your trion body and walk in over your unconscious body. Now, which option will it be?"

The guy fell down as he tried to get away from me. I think he was trying to speak or beg for mercy, or maybe something else, but I couldn't really hear him.

"The first option. As amusing as it would be to see the second, I'd rather that you didn't blow up our squad member." A new voice said from the door.

As I dissipated the blocks of trion, I turned to the guy at the door and bowed down. "Sorry about that. He was really testing my patience."

He waved his hand in dismissal. "It's alright. Yuiga acts like that to a lot of people. I'm Kohei Izumi, shooter for Tachikawa squad. You're Lucca, right? The guy who made record time for reaching A-rank? I saw some of your solo rank replays while our captain was reviewing them. I have to say, that's some really fancy shooter work that you have worked out."

I shrugged. "I'm mainly here to learn how to use Kogetsu right now, though we could exchange ideas on shooter strategy from time to time, I guess."

"Hey, that doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. Maybe after your lessons with Tachikawa. Does that work?"

"Eh, next lesson. I have to help the rest of my squad with working out enrollment stuff, as well as patrol afterwards."

"Aww. I guess we can wait until then. Come on in."

* * *

When I walked into Tachikawa Squad's operation room, I noticed Tachikawa pretty much right away. Honestly, it was pretty hard not to notice him, as he was staring at me with an interested look in his eye.

"You're Lucca, right? The Neighbor that sensei asked me to teach regarding using Kogetsu?"

I nodded. "Yep. That's me."

"Seeing as it's a request from sensei, I can't really deny you, but before we start, I just have a couple questions."

I nodded. "Alright. What are your questions?"

"First off, you're a Neighbor with a black trigger. Why do you need lessons on Kogetsu? With your black trigger, you could technically qualify as an S-class agent directly."

Ah, so that's what the questions are going to be about. "Two reasons mainly. First, I don't want to rely that much on my black trigger. Secondly, learning how to use Kogetsu will indirectly improve my ability to use my black trigger."

"Alright, that's fair. Second, what exactly are you doing here? I heard a lot of the details from Shinoda regarding how you're here for protection, but is there anything else to it?"

"Let me guess, it seems too convenient that a Neighbor with a black trigger suddenly decides to show up and offer his abilities to Border in exchange for protection?" I asked.

"Exactly. You have another motive, don't you?"

I shrugged. "Guilty. Though said motive is more of a personal goal than something that has to do with Border. If I don't achieve it, that's fine. There's a good chance that things will still work in my favor."

"And this goal is?" He asked.

I hesitated. While it's true that everything should still be alright even if I don't achieve my goal, the goal is still really personal to me. The problem is, if I don't tell him, there's a good chance that he will report this information to Kido, and in exchange they'll keep a very close eye on me. Much as I wouldn't mind, it would restrain their resources for defense. And if another large-scale invasion happens, which it probably will, Border is liable to receive more losses.

In the end, I figured it would be better to tell Tachikawa part of it, just to get the curiosity out of his system.

"My goal is to see to the death of two people from my homeworld that have caused me much suffering. While I would like to kill them with my own hands, I will settle for any other method that I can use to kill them."

Tachikawa seemed to register this information for a little bit before standing up. "Right then, let's get to your training today then. I'll teach everything you need to know about using Kogetsu."

I stood up and bowed. "Thank you very much, Tachikawa-senpai."

* * *

"The first thing we'll have to go over in using Kogetsu are the techniques. Once you learn the techniques, it'll simply be a matter of practicing them with me until you have them mastered. To do that, we'll be having at least ten matches every single day so you can practice the techniques, though I'm willing to go up to thirty in a day. It's up to you."

"Can we go over techniques for now? I can figure out how many matches I'll need later on."

Tachikawa nodded. "Alright. From looking at the replays of your solo ranked battles, I can say you have a pretty good handle in terms of your battle sense. But where you're lacking—" he pulled out a datapad with multiple clips on it "— is in your offensive variation."

I watched all the clips and started noticing a trend right away. If I force someone into a zone that I create with Viper, I use the same move to attack with Kogetsu every single time. Come to think of it, that's where Kitora and Midorikawa were able to exploit an opening.

"As you can easily see here, your offensive variation is pretty much nonexistent. Which is why we'll start with your offensive techniques. While using shooting triggers the way that you do allows you to maximize your advantage in close-range fights, it won't be enough against an opponent that knows what he or she is doing, as shown when you went up against Kitora and Midorikawa. On the other hand, your defense seems pretty good, though I've noticed that your defensive moves have been more responsive and improvised instead of being standard. Why is that?"

I thought for a moment. "Probably because of my side effect. I process information way faster than anyone else and can make deductions based on the information that I see."

"I see. As it stands, your defense is decent, but can use improvement. Improvising like what you've done works, but the form you use doesn't maximize efficiency. I can't teach you that in whole, but I can still show you some things that will help you improve your defensive ability."

I nodded. "So what are we starting with?"

"Let's start with offensive techniques in general. Afterwards, I'll show you the best situation to use each of them in, based on your opponents' posture and positioning, as well as ways to transition from defense to offense and back immediately."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Ai Kitora

* * *

When Lucca got back to our operations room, I was a bit surprised to see that he seemed really worn out. Is he going to be alright during patrol?

"What happened to you? You look completely exhausted."

Lucca waved his hand in dismissal. "Tachikawa worked me to the bone. I'll be fine for patrol though. But nevermind that, what do we have to do regarding recruitment?"

Huh. I guess Tachikawa isn't as laid-back as I thought he was. Tokieda-senpai spoke. "Well, recruitment spiked up pretty high ever since the press conference. We have somewhere around 130 potential recruits right now."

 _That many, huh? And you guys lost around thirty agents right after the invasion? What caused the spike in recruitment?_ Aria asked.

Ever since Aria made her presence known to us, she's pretty much been a part of all of our discussions. It's been rather beneficial, as even though she wasn't as involved with military stuff as Lucca was, she was still able to provide a lot of insight. And she's actually really fun to talk with from time to time.

"Definitely the press conference. Everyone got really worked up over the news of the expeditions to the Neighbor worlds." Arashiyama commented.

"Yeah, all thanks to Mikumo." I commented drily. Thanks to him, our workload regarding induction just multiplied.

"Well, couldn't we have induction every month instead of every four months then?" Lucca asked.

"That's what we were thinking. There's just one other thing we're having a problem with." Satori said, frowning.

"Oh? What is that?"

I sighed. "We're not completely sure as to how to sort them out. It's a given that we'll only take in around thirty per induction, but as for how to sort them, even I'm not sure."

"We can't just take in those with high trion. It would be unfair for the rest. And there are other areas where trainees are more proficient. We can try making a weighted score to rate them by, but sorting through all of that without a designated program to do so will take a while. We need to make sure that a fair number of people from each weighted group will be in each induction." Arashiyama commented.

"We also considered letting them in by people who tested well in other areas that weren't related to trion, though they might be better for operators. It's a lot of material to sift through."

 _In that case, why not let Lucca handle it? His side effect can process all of this stuff way faster than a computer._

Lucca groaned. "Way to put me on the spot, Aria."

I almost laughed, but for the sake of being professional, decided against it.

Tokieda nodded at Aria's suggestion. "That would probably work. Lucca's side effect could get through this stuff pretty quickly. Not to mention any more applications that might come through.

"You sure you can handle it, Lucca?" Ayatsuji asked.

Lucca sighed. "It's not that I can't handle it by myself, it's just going to take a while. We can make it faster if you help by typing down the group designations as I make them."

"I don't know…" Our operator commented hesitantly. It did seem tedious, what Lucca was asking help for.

"Two boxes of my homemade daifuku mochi in return for helping." Lucca pitched an offer before she could come up with any particular reasons for not helping.

"It's a deal!"

Everyone couldn't help but let out a little chuckle. Ayatsuji has such a sweet tooth. And Lucca had proved himself the master of making any food that he set his mind to. His daifuku mochi are amazing.

Before Lucca could started working, General Manager Shinoda appeared.

"Lucca, Commander Kido was looking for you."

* * *

POV Change, 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"What does he want? Is this about Liberi's military and political structure? I did say I would tell you guys more about it, so that wouldn't be surprising." I asked.

Shinoda shook his head. "Part of it might be, though I guess Kido might want to hear about that later."

When we got to the meeting room, it wasn't too surprising to see the executive branch there, though I was slightly surprised to see a few agents there as well, who I recognized as being members of Kazama Squad.

"Ah, Lucca. Good. Come on in. We have a few questions for you."

I nodded. "Of course, sir."

"I hear you have started taking lessons from Tachikawa. Why is that?"

I scratched my head in slight awkwardness. It was kind of embarrassing. "Well, I was honestly hoping to one day just retire and live my life out in Mikado City. To do that, I want to have a good amount of savings built up so that I don't have to worry about making money. I heard that salary grows larger as you rank up, whether in solo rank or in team rank. To help with that, I asked Tachikawa for lessons so I could get to a good standing in A-rank. My abilities won't cut it without the lessons. Don't worry though, I'll be around if you need help with anything that you need help with. I won't abandon Border."

I think a couple of them laughed. General Manager Shinoda and Branch Manager Rindo even cracked a small smile.

Kido remained impassive. "I see. Thank you for your continued assistance. However, there was something else that was brought to our attention. Three days ago, we heard some rather disturbing things regarding your past. One of our prisoners here told us about how you almost killed him, but not before torturing him to the point that he is scared for his life with you so close by."

So that's what this is about. I nodded. "If you're talking about Hyuse, yes it's true. I did act very uncivilly to him. He tried to capture my sister, and I saw fit to end his life for what he did."

"What we need to know is that you will not attempt to kill him here." He said.

I shook my head. "As a current agent of Border, I will abide by all protocol that other agents follow. I promise that much, commander."

"Very well. In that case, in the scenario where we obtain another hostage, you will not attempt to kill them, correct?"

I nodded. "If I may, sir, I want there to be two exceptions to this rule."

Kido stared. "Oh? Who might these two people be?"

 _Lucca no!_ I heard Aria scream in my head, knowing exactly who I was thinking of when I had this condition in mind.

"Auriel and Lia Dux, the current two strongest trigger users in Liberi, holders of the black triggers Pendolos and Skeptron, and my parents."

These are who I was talking about when I told Tachikawa that there were two people that I wanted to see dead. I didn't think I would let out this secret so soon, but if I want to get the permission to kill them as an agent, this is the way to do it.

"Denied."

I blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"If we capture the two people you spoke of, permission will not be granted for you to kill them. They will remain prisoners of war at Border. As prisoners, they will hold much more value than if they are dead."

I bowed as I realized how unreasonable I must have sounded. "I understand sir."

People like mother and father are probably bound to have lots of information that Border could use, from trigger technology to potential hostage exchange.

"Now, since we are on the topic, could you tell us what you know about Liberi?"

I stood up straight. I may have been disappointed by the lack of agreement from Kido, but that was not part of my original agreement. "Of course, sir. As you know, Liberi is the marine nation. As such, they've developed trion soldiers and triggers for the most part that allow for sea to air and sea to land combat, though their land to land combat is no laughing matter. Like all other nations, they have access to trion soldiers that we see quite often from most countries, such as bamsters and mole mods. They also have their own specialized trion soldiers, but those are fit only for underwater ventures. As headquarters prevents any portals from opening outside of the danger zone, we can ignore those. Liberi specializes in defense, as until about three months ago, they had no defeats on home soil in more than eight years. "

"Why was that?" Kazama asked, intrigued.

"Two reasons. First, our specialized trion soldiers are exceptionally good for artillery strikes that we use to prevent the enemy from advancing. Second, I was in charge of organizing the defense of Liberi back to when I was nine years old. Aftokrator's second invasion of Liberi was the first time we ever suffered a defeat. My father, the supreme commander, does not take lightly to failure. He would have taken away my trigger and left me to the streets, so I ran away before he could do that."

"So that's how you eventually ended up here. If you don't mind, can you detail Liberi's black triggers for us?"

I nodded. "Arashiyama Squad has detailed my black trigger for you guys, so I'll go on to the others. There are three other black triggers belonging to Liberi. Pendolos, Skeptron, and Iratze. Pendolos, which belongs to my father, is essentially a speartip on a wire that can be manipulated to move anywhere within its range. The wire is practically unbreakable, and will be left along the path of the trigger. Kind of like a Viper. Skeptron, my mother's trigger, is essentially an overpowered version of our own Hound trigger, as once the user locks onto a target, the bullets from Skeptron will dodge anything that is not the target in order to hit the target. Iratze is significantly different from the other two and is used mainly as a defensive trigger, with its ability to completely repair trion bodies on the go. It basically has an internal battery that is used for trion repairs."

"What are the weaknesses for each one?"

"Pendolos has two weaknesses. Its range is limited, and the user must stay still when creating things with its wires. You could probably win with a couple well-placed snipers. Skeptron has a significant recharge time, during which you have plenty of opportunity to do damage, while Iratze can only repair two trion bodies at any given moment. The biggest weakness though, is that if its battery is exhausted, it will begin eating at the user's trion supply in order to fix other trion bodies. The battery will recharge over time, but it takes about thirty minutes to recharge. I'm not sure as to who holds Iratze at the moment."

"How do you not know?" As I was defensive coordinator for Liberi, they probably figured that I did know. And for a while, I did. There was just one catch.

"Because every single man and woman loyal to me was executed by my mother after the loss we suffered against Aftokrator. Among them, the old holder to Iratze and my mentor. If we could, I would rather pick up this conversation another time." The memories threatened to flood my mind at any moment, and I couldn't afford to let that happen right in front of them. It would raise too many questions.

"Hmm. Very well. Dismissed. Thank you for your time, Lucca."

I nodded, eager to get out of the place before my mind exploded.

* * *

Unfortunately, I didn't get very far before my memories triggered and I was incapacitated by a flashback. I couldn't do anything except grip my head and hope that the flashback stopped soon.

 _Flashback_

 _About a week after the battle against Aftokrator that we lost, the men directly under my command were detained. I was at home when I heard the news. Rumors had been afloat in the military that I might be relieved of Sword Saint, which had me worrying. At least until I heard the news. I practically sprinted towards the training grounds when I heard the news._

 _There had been only one other execution that occurred during my days in the military. The person in question was Aftokrator's spy, who I personally executed after learning about how he tipped off Aftokrator about Aria's existence._

 _This time, it was different. I watched in horror as the ten soldiers that had served directly under me were all lined up on posts in the middle of the training grounds. I stepped forward, intending to remove the soldiers from the post. I knew what those posts were for, and damn the consequences, I would get my men down from those posts._

 _Unfortunately, before I could get there, a group of soldiers appeared, who created a blockade so I couldn't pass._

" _What is the meaning of this? Stand aside, now!" I commanded._

" _I'm sorry, sir. Our orders come from your father, who precedes you in rank."_

" _My father be damned! I order you to stand aside!"_

" _My goodness, Lucca. I thought we taught you to remain composed at all times. We never taught you to lose your temper over a simple execution." The most distasteful voice in the world echoed out from behind me._

 _I turned around to face my father. "A simple execution? Those are my men that are being executed. What is the purpose to this, General Auriel?"_

 _The smirk on my father's face only grew more feral. "Why, Colonel Lucca, I thought I already told you. We don't accept failure here."_

 _I glared at him coldly. "And yet you don't execute me. Why?"_

" _Well, it would hardly be fitting for us to execute you along with your guard, who failed to protect you. Besides, family events shouldn't have any casualties from the family in question."_

" _What do you mean family—" I turned around and caught my breath the moment I saw who the executioner was. "…No…"_

 _Lia, my mother, was standing as the executioner. She was using an Arpio trigger, the closest thing we had to a harpoon, and had it poised above the heart of one of my guard. The look on her face spoke of no regret. Rather, she had the same cruel smirk on her face that father did, almost as if she enjoyed executing people, though I knew this was far more personal._

 _Before any other thoughts could register, she stabbed the first man through the heart, killing him almost right away. It stopped me in my tracks, as I could only stand there, mourning the man who had been my best friend._

" _Alessio…"_

 _The woman next to him who had been his betrothed was next._

" _Gemma…"_

 _The next man managed to make eye contact with me. I still remember that one time the two of us got into a cooking competition and I won by one vote. He claimed I cheated because I had my side effect, but it was all in good fun._

" _Eustace…"_

 _My mother proceeded to the next two and killed them at the same time. Twins, the two of them. They pretty much did everything together, much like how Aria and I would have been if Aria's body had been more stable._

" _Gisella… Ezio…"_

 _At this point, my mind could take no more. But before I could activate Sword Saint and charge in to try and save them, I found myself bound in the wire that was used in Pendolos._

" _Come now, Colonel. You can't stop an execution that's been ordered by a higher-up. It simply isn't done. Besides, we'll find a new guard for you before long."_

 _At this point, the only thing I could do was watch as my mother went on to the next person in line and continued her work. I could only watch, as Ark, Seria, Viola, and Lupin all fell at my mother's hands._

 _As if that wasn't enough, they had put a tenth post up. My eyes widened as I recognized who it was._

 _I couldn't hold back myself. "No! Stop! You can't kill Lucian also!"_

 _Everyone ignored my pleas, as my mother turned and proceeded to raise the Arpio trigger, ready to plunge it into the man who had been my teacher and more of a father than my biological father had ever been._

 _Somehow, Lucian heard me. He managed to raise his head and say something. It was only because I was looking up that I was able to read his lips._

" _Run." He said._

 _That night was the start of my long journey that eventually led me to Meeden._

 _Flashback End_

After the flashback ended, I uncurled myself and found my squad leader standing in front of me.

"Lucca? Are you alright? What happened? I wanted to move you, but Aria told me not to do anything until you recovered."

As I stood up, Aria explained. _Lucca has this mental disorder where he finds himself reliving the past in flashbacks. It usually happens after he remember stressful things that relate to what happened. Depending on the level of trauma, it can do anything ranging from making him remember the events as he does everyday activities to physically and mentally incapacitating him._

"Posttraumatic stress disorder."

I blinked. "Huh?"

"It's a mental disorder that affects people through mental triggers. A lot of soldiers in militaries are affected by this, especially if they witnessed something traumatic. People in abusive families are usually affected by it as well. Is there anything in particular that can trigger this response from you?"

"Certain events of my past that I would rather leave quiet." I muttered, still in a bit of shock from that flashback.

"Right. What caused it this time?"

Aria took the initiative to explain, to prevent me from possibly focusing on something else from the past. _Commander Kido asked for information on Liberi. Something in Lucca's information regarding Liberi triggered his reaction this time. I'm not sure what, as I can't read Lucca's mind._

"I witnessed that execution again." I muttered.

"Huh?" Both squad leader and sister sounded their confusion.

"Lucian's execution…"

Aria's shock was evident. _You mean mother actually… Oh no… So that's why you want them dead._

"Who?" Arashiyama asked.

I shook my head. "Another time. I have to help you guys sort out the applications, remember?"

"No you don't. Take a break, Lucca. That's an order from your squad leader. Don't worry about cooking either."

I blinked, surprised. "Seriously? I'm fine, I can still work, you know."

 _Plus, cooking is actually one of Lucca's favorite pastimes. You are NOT taking that from him._ Aria added.

"You are not ordering me not to cook. How are you guys going to survive off that muck that they serve in the cafeteria?" I asked, a playful smile on my face.

* * *

POV Change, 3rd Person: Jun Arashiyama

* * *

I couldn't help but laugh a bit as we walked back to our operations room. "Hey, the food in the cafeteria isn't bad. Besides, everyone else survives off of it just fine."

"That's because they haven't had a taste of my cooking. I don't mess up meals."

"Then why don't you help from the cafeteria from time to time?"

 _Are you kidding? Lucca would work them to death with his perfectionist standards for cooking._ Aria almost sounded like she was laughing.

"Hey, I wouldn't be THAT mean to them." Lucca complained.

 _Alright, you would work them to exhaustion. Happy?_

"Not particularly, but I guess that's an improvement."

"You two really have that sibling dynamic down." I chuckled. Why couldn't my siblings be like that?

Both Lucca and Aria spoke at literally the same time. "Comes with being a twin."

 _After all—_ Aria began

"The two of us—" Lucca continued

 _Have been at this for ages._ Aria finished.

"Did… you two just finish each other's sentences?" I asked.

"To be fair—"

 _This is hardly—_

"The first time—"

 _That we've—_

"Ok, ok! I get it! It's already hurting my head, trying to follow you guys talk."

Lucca had a mischievous look on his face. "Maybe you should take a break, squad leader."

Did he and Aria do all that just to prove that he could still work? "Oh fine, don't take a break. But you're not working on the applications now. I stand by that order."

 _How about I work on it instead? I can use Lucca's side effect, you know._ Aria asked, as we finally made it back to the operations room.

Huh?

* * *

 **Well that was heavy. I wanted to lighten things up at the end. Aria might be a bit unnecessary as a person, but I have fun writing her from time to time. As of right now, there's no real purpose to her, but I have a couple ideas. One of which involves turning her into an autonomous trion soldier, the other being a secret for the moment. One simple hint: She's a catalyst.**

 **Oh yeah, shoutout next chapter to the people who figure out the references/inspirations for these triggers. Two of them should be easy for anyone who's an avid bookworm. You have an indefinite amount of time. Basically until I release next chapter. Which can range anywhere from one week to two months.**

 **Pendolos (Auriel's trigger)**

 **Skeptron (Lia's trigger)**

 **Iratze (formerly Lucian's trigger)**

 **Armatus (Lucca's trigger)**


	10. Chapter 10

**I'm honestly not too surprised that no one answered, but I wanted to see if anyone got the references.**

 **So the references/inspirations for the following triggers:**

 **Pendolos: Lyserg Diethel from Shaman King (a series I fell in love with in middle school). I modeled Pendolos off the medium that he uses with Morphin. I actually thought this would originally fit better as Lucca's trigger. After all, Lyserg is pretty hell-bent on revenge when we first meet him in the story.**

 **Skeptron: The skeptron from Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire. Yeah, I changed it somewhat, but it's the same idea. Lots of power to kill lots of stuff.**

 **Iratze: Literally the most used rune in the Mortal Instruments series, I figured a healing rune would be fit as a name for a trigger that repairs others. I'm pretty sure the user would be a kind person, which fits as Lucca's mentor.**

 **Armatus: Tales of Zestiria. The mode change where you practically fuse with your companion to get fancy powers. I chose the two changes for Lailah and Zaveid/Dezel, as they were more closely related to blades, which is half of Lucca's theme in terms of fighting. I might incorporate the other armatus forms somehow, but I'm not sure as to how I'll do it yet. Come to think of it, Lucca is kind of like a Shepherd in how he has a companion that's invisible to everyone.**

 **If anyone was going to guess any of the triggers, it would probably be Skeptron, Iratze, and Armatus. Pendolos was more of a wild shot.**

 **Without further ado, onto the story!**

* * *

POV: 3rd Person

* * *

Calvaria was a peaceful nation in the Neighborhood, only focusing on defending themselves when attacked. On most days, it was a peaceful place. Today was not a peaceful day.

Raymond, the leader behind the defense, could only scoot back in horror as every single trigger user he had brought with him had been defeated when they tried to fight the intruder.

"Come now, I just asked you gentlemen a simple question. It shouldn't be that hard to answer, should it? Besides, I'll leave you alone once I get my answer." The intruder grinned as his weapon returned to the gauntlet on his arm.

"W-why are you going so far for just one trigger, even if it's a black trigger?" Raymond asked, still trying to get up.

"Hm. I suppose you don't know this, as occurrences have been very rare, but black triggers created from the trion of a person holding the ability to become the god of a star have the ability to evolve beyond their original capabilities. For us to let go of such a trigger would be quite the waste. Surely, you can understand, can't you?"

"Even so, I'm not telling you where he went." Raymond said, finally getting up.

"Let's think this through logically. I could kill you and order my men that I brought with me to begin killing your people. It would only take a few minutes to decimate your population. Or, you could tell me what I want to know and I'll leave this place as it was before. There is a reason that I haven't killed any of you yet."

"You're bluffing."

The intruder sighed. "A pity that you don't believe me. Shall I show you my resolve?"

Before Raymond could ask what he meant, the gauntlet that the intruder had released its weapon, which then proceeded to pierce through the heart of one of the men on the ground. Raymond could only stare in horror, as the intruder calmly recalled his weapon and spoke again. "Think about it. Save the life of your people, or end up being the death of them as you continue to defend a man who you have absolutely no debt or allegiance to."

Raymond finally caved in. "Meeden. He went to Meeden looking for one of his friends."

"Thank you. That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

The intruder turned around and walked away, speaking into his comlink. "Lia, we're leaving. Tell everyone that we're going back home. Our target has run away to Meeden."

"Should we contact Ergatis then, General? They should be making contact with Meeden in a few weeks. We can make use of the world teleporter that they helped install."

"Do it. We'll need their help in reclaiming Sword Saint, given the user."

"Very well. Lia out."

As the communication channel closed, the man looked to the sky, where a portal was opening for them to go back to Liberi.

Auriel Dux grinned. "It seems we'll be seeing you much sooner than I thought, my dear son."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

"So you can use Lucca's side effect?" Tokieda asked.

 _Well, somewhat. It's more along the lines of I can process the same information that Lucca processes through his eyes, now that we're bonded like this. It's really cool, actually. Lucca's brain is like a supercomputer when his side effect is at full performance._

"In other words, when Lucca uses his side effect, you end up using it as well because you're sharing the same vision?"

 _Pretty much. But come on, the enlistment stuff isn't going to get organized by itself._

"Hold on a second. I just ordered Lucca not to do this stuff today. But we're still using Lucca's side effect?" Arashiyama asked.

"We can just focus on the first month's enlistment. It shouldn't take me more than five minutes." I said.

"Are you sure? I still need to record your assignments after you make them." Ayatsuji commented.

"Positive."

As I started scanning through the information, I frowned. "I don't see the weighted scores in here. They haven't done the actual testing yet, have they?"

"Unfortunately, no. We might need to stall this until next time."

"Done." I said, handing Ayatsuji a sheet of paper that I had just finished writing on.

"You're kidding."

"Oh, I never kid about this kind of stuff. Here's the assignments based on how they'll do during their testing for recruitment. Just write this down as a program and it'll be ready. If you link it with the testing hall, it'll instantly put down this information for who qualifies for the first month once each person finishes their test. If anyone complains, send them to me."

Everyone just stared at me in shock.

I was confused. "What? The majority of them haven't done testing yet, so it was easier to create a formula on which they would be evaluated and placed into their spots."

"Still, you did it really fast." Arashiyama commented.

I shrugged. "Overpowered side effect. What do you expect?"

"Fair enough."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I've been ordered to take a break for the rest of the day. I'll just go to the house and start working on that daifuku mochi." I said.

* * *

On the way home, Aria and I started talking again.

 _You're telling me that mother was responsible for killing Lucian?_

"And the rest of the guard as well. Father ordered their execution after that loss against Aftokrator."

 _I was shut down during that time... no wonder I didn't know about it until now._

"I didn't want to talk about it with you."

 _No, it's alright. I understand. It's hard for you as well._

"I'd say you have no idea, but you have every single idea of what's going on."

Once we finally got back to the house that the squad met at (I claimed it for a living space. Didn't want to go on living off Arashiyama forever), I got started on the daifuku mochi.

 _I have to say, that looks really good. I can't actually go hungry anymore, but that looks delicious._

"Yeah, I have to get this finished pretty quickly. Everyone's coming over here once they finish patrol, after all."

After finishing up the mochi, I proceeded to start cooking dinner for the squad. I made sure to make everyone's favorite dishes, which really wasn't too hard. As I cooked, Aria started talking.

 _Do you think the military is looking for you?_

I frowned. "I don't think so. I actually snuck back through home to get to Meeden, and I didn't see any reports of active searches for me."

 _Probably because they were dealing with a direct invasion from Aftokrator at the time, but who knows. You worried at all?_

"Not really. Liberi isn't going to be in portal range for a while, so we can relax. Unless Ergatis somehow ends up orbiting Meeden soon, which I doubt will happen."

 _Ergatis… aren't they the nation with the funny-looking trion soldiers? The one that you and Lucian went to for negotiating an alliance when they came into orbit around Liberi?_

"Yeah, that's the one. We helped them perfect their marine trion soldiers, they gave us some blueprints that were useful for creating new trion soldiers."

 _So what's the worry? They're not that big of a country._

"This was actually classified information, so you don't this, but Ergatis has a world teleporter that we connected with our world."

 _Hold on, what? A world teleporter? How does that work?_

"Basically you can travel to any planet in the entire system so long as you have another teleporter in that area. Liberi was the only one that they installed a world teleporter on. The biggest downside is that it takes a long time to charge up and it's very loud. Which was why I didn't use it to escape. The military might use it though."

 _That's concerning. What if Ergatis comes into orbit range of Meeden?_

I sighed. "I'll figure it out later. But in the off-chance that Ergatis does come, we'll have to get prepared. Ergatis has way too much variety in their trion soldiers to leave everything to chance. I think that's their biggest strength."

 _They do follow a trend though. Although I have to wonder, how about that other top secret trion soldier that you said you managed to get information on? The one that Ergatis's Dr. Lamia was working on?_

"That particular trion soldier is still in development. Apparently, they came across some ridiculous functional errors when they were trying to get it to work. Not to mention that said trion soldier is so inefficient with its trion that it can only operate in battle for a short time. Besides, the strength of their trion soldiers comes from the sneaky stuff that they can do with them, not their individual power."

 _That's true. By the way, you need to cook for some more people. Arashiyama just contacted me and told me that the other squad on patrol is on their way here to eat._

"And they didn't bother to ask me how I felt about it." I sighed.

 _Oh shut up. We both know you like cooking._

"Fair enough. It's the only thing that I do where something doesn't happen to me. Or something doesn't blow up."

 _What about dancing?_

"Don't mention this to anyone, but I tripped around eighty times during my first ten lessons. Commanding the defense force was way easier."

 _You have got to fill me in on the story sometime._

"Later tonight. Do you know who else is coming over?"

 _No clue. Though Arashiyama told me that only the squad members were coming over. The fourth one apparently has a fear of boys or something._

"Wait, what?"

 _I know. I don't get it either._

The first one to arrive at the door was Ayatsuji. Part of me wondered how she got here before everyone else, but then I brushed it off due to the fact that we didn't have to worry about the squad getting overwhelmed.

I placed everything on the food warmer before handing her the boxes of mochi that I had made. "Here's the mochi. I put some strawberries in them, so try to finish them quickly."

"Can I start eating now?" she asked, her mouth almost salivating.

I drilled her with a stare. "If you eat them now, you'll upset your stomach during dinner. You can wait until after dinner."

She pouted. "Fine."

A few minutes later, we heard people start coming in. Seeing the rest of the squad come in wasn't a surprise.

"Really Lucca, I don't get why you have to cook here and now. Couldn't you cook the meals in advance and then save it in the fridge in the kitchenette?" Our squad leader asked.

"You mean that tiny place? Are you kidding me? The kitchenette wouldn't fit all the food. And reheated food doesn't taste good."

"Still, would it really kill you to cook somewhere that wasn't this particular kitchen?" Satori asked.

"For your information, I have cooked outside this kitchen before."

"Oh? Where was this? And why have we never heard of this before?"

"My place." A voice from just outside said.

I glanced over from where I was cooking to see Nasu squad pile in as well. Looks like we'll need some more chairs.

I blinked in surprise. "Rei?"

She smiled shyly. "Hi, Lucca."

"So your squad is the reason I'm cooking extra?"

"Yep. Sorry about that."

"Eh, no worries. It's not going to kill me. Besides, I like cooking."

"Ohoho. I see. Cooking for your girlfriend, huh?" Satori said, a small smirk on his face.

I'm pretty sure Rei's face went about as red as mine, given that we both shouted at him at the same time. "We are not dating!"

"Wow! So synchronized. You sure you're not dating?" Akane exclaimed.

"Oh great, not you too, Akane-chan." Rei sighed in exasperation.

"Yes, I'm pretty sure we're not dating." I sighed as well.

"Alright, you're both sighing in exasperation as well as trying to deny any sort of connection of that nature with each other. Are you sure _absolutely_ sure that the two of you aren't dating?" Kumagai asked.

"No!"

 _Come now, denial is one of many things that you'll experience on your way to acceptance, whether it be death, dating, or winning some kind of lottery._

"Oh, shut up. Not you too, Aria!"

I realized my mistake then and there. Aria was technically an Arashiyama squad exclusive secret, so no one else knew about her.

"Aria? Isn't that your sister's name? I thought she was dead." Rei asked, very confused.

Tokieda decided to give her the short version before I could. "Technically, she's an AI created from Aria's consciousness that now resides in Lucca's trigger and can talk to him through his head. Since right now, we're not at base and our triggers aren't activated, Aria can only communicate with Lucca."

"Basically, yes." I confirmed, feeling rather embarrassed at the moment.

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person

* * *

Auriel could only close his eyes as he prepared himself for what laid ahead. No matter how determined he was to find his quarry, he had to be careful. After all, his target was Lucca. As the world teleporter was getting prepared, he closed his eyes, taking deep breaths.

Auriel Dux was a very imposing man, with white hair and the same eyes that Lucca had, the exact same silver irises. His entire body was well-toned and tan, as he worked out a lot in the sun. Despite this, he was a very affluent man, making his way up the hierarchy with ruthlessness and cunning, always planning ahead to ensure that he got the results he preferred. A trait that he shared with his wife.

"Preparing yourself for what's ahead, General?" A female voice asked.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Auriel Dux turned to look at his wife and comrade all these years. While they had shown affection for each other in the past, displays of emotion between the two were seldom, as shown by their constant addressing of each other by their military titles.

They held no love for their children though. For them, results always came first, regardless of the method. That was why they had the children in the first place. In theory, children could hold as much potential as their parents. Even though trion ability had as much basis in chance as it did in hereditary means, it didn't stop them from trying to pass it on.

When the twins were born, everyone was surprised. Firstly because they were twins, but more importantly, because of their talents, which ranged from Aria's trion organ to Lucca's unparalleled side effect. If focused right, they could in theory defeat anyone that they put their minds to defeating. Which was why their children's capacity for kindness had always bothered both of them to no end. Emotions made for too much variability in the equation.

Auriel had tried many times to remedy what he considered Lucca's weakness, through hardening of Lucca's heart. The executing of his guard was meant to be a method to completely seal away all attachments he had and make him focus only on results.

Clearly, the results were not found, as Lucca ran away the night his guard was executed. However, Auriel and Lia would not deny one thing. They enjoyed the execution. Mainly because among the guards that were executed, Lucian was one of them. While Auriel liked to think himself devoid of many emotions, jealousy was not something that he was devoid of. When he and Lia saw Lucca and Aria attaching themselves more and more to Lucian, he could only feel a surge of jealousy, however slight.

Auriel stood up from where he was meditating. "To some degree. After all, the target is Lucca. There's no telling what he may have planned for us."

"All the same, our son is a broken man. After the execution, he lost everyone that he held dear. I think you may be overthinking this somewhat. After all, committing two black triggers to retrieve one is a risky endeavor. Who knows what would happen if a stronger country invaded while we were gone?"

"The only close-by country right now is Kion. And their priority has always been of a more defensive nature. Besides, Kion has never been comfortable with going up against us. Their last five defeats say as much. Lucca is a much more dangerous target, after all."

After Lucca had left, other countries had tried invading Liberi in hopes that without their defensive tactical genius, the marine nation would fall. Many would fail. Only Aftokrator succeeded in doing any significant damage to them.

"Very well. As you command, General."

With that, Lia left his presence, leaving herself to reminisce on her thoughts.

Unlike her husband, Lia Dux was a sadist. While she normally didn't let it get in the way of her mission, she wouldn't inhibit it her nature if the compromise didn't jeopardize the mission. When she found that she was compatible with the black trigger Skeptron, she was honestly a bit disappointed. As a long range trigger, she wouldn't be able to see her victims suffer. Which was why she took to carrying a normal Arpio trigger with her as well.

However, even she knew the threat that Lucca could present. Unlike what most people in the military thought, there was more to Lucca than the prowess that came with his side effect. This secret was only known to a select few, as even Lucca was not aware of his abilities when he first used them.

A moment later, a soldier ran up to her. "Madam! The world teleporter is connected. We can go to Ergatis at any time. Shall I go inform the general?"

Lia nodded. "Do it. We have a couple of weeks to prepare before we reach Meeden. Once there, proceed with caution."

"Understood, ma'am."

As the soldier ran off, Lia took a breath before letting herself smile. "I wonder, Lucca. What connections of yours can I sever this time?"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

Today was a strange day. First, we have patrol at the same time as Arashiyama Squad, which is right before dinner. As it turns out, Lucca wasn't even there. Apparently, Arashiyama had ordered him to take a break from patrol, which made me slightly disappointed. NOT in that way. Right after telling me this, he invites our squad over for dinner, saying that Lucca is cooking for us. When we finally get there, everyone teases the two of us to death and then we discover the existence of Lucca's sister-turned-AI.

Somehow, we still managed to have a rather normal dinner. Lucca's cooking is really good though. He could probably start his own restaurant if he wanted.

After dinner though, I actually wanted to meet and talk with Aria. Having never met her before, I really wanted to see what she was like.

Lucca refused, though. Said the timing wasn't really right. He did say that I could come over tomorrow, so there's that opportunity.

"So are you just going to go back home now?" Lucca asked.

"Actually, I was thinking we could watch a movie. You know that newest horror movie that was getting all that hype? The producers gave us an advanced copy as a thank you for protecting the people during the invasion." Satori said, a sly smirk on his face.

Oh, that movie. I was actually looking forward to watching that movie for a while. The producers have always been really good at making this particular series realistic. Plus it's a good way to introduce Lucca to movies. I hope. Satori's probably hoping for that whole get scared and hold on to someone reaction from me. Probably won't get me, though.

"Wait, so what's a movie?" Lucca asked.

"Basically a recording that gets replayed for people's entertainment." Kitora said.

"For… entertainment?" Lucca was very confused.

"It's a pretty popular thing. People are always making new movies, so they come up with new movies with better visual and sound effects."

"Eh, I guess I'll watch. Learning about the culture here has been pretty interesting so far. Besides, what could go wrong?"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Ai Kitora

* * *

"Find your happy place, Lucca. Find your happy place." Lucca muttered under his breath from the corner he was shivering in.

Out of all the people I expected to be curled up in a fetal position in the corner of a room after a horror movie, Lucca would have been the very last person I put on that list. Yet here he was, the first and only person watching the movie who ended up in the corner in fetal position almost right after we got to the scary bits of the movie. As far as movie went, I thought it was alright. Nothing as scary as to the level that Lucca was reacting at the moment. Everyone else was shivering a bit after the movie (the producers were really good, after all), but no one had gone down to the level that Lucca had.

"Was it really that scary, Lucca?" Satori asked. Said twin sniper had decided to pull out a camera just to record how Lucca would react during the movie. He was not disappointed.

"That thing had blood streaming out of its eye sockets and down its face! How was that not scary?"

"… You know those effects are fake, right?"

"Who cares about that? That was still scary!"

I get the feeling that Aria was laughing her head off at Lucca's reaction, assuming she hadn't shut down for the night. I still don't fully understand Aria's capabilities, though I don't think anyone does. Not even Aria.

"How does it not affect you guys as badly? Why would anyone even want to watch horror movies?"

"Probably to get a kick out of getting scared." Nasu commented.

"I don't get it! Why in the world would you EVER want to entertain yourself by scaring yourself? How does that even work?"

I think I know why Lucca was affected so badly. Firstly, as a Neighbor, he didn't have the experience of ever watching a movie, let alone something of the horror genre. Secondly, his side effect lets him take in all the details. Even the gory little bits of detail. And this movie had a lot of those, thanks to really good producers. Poor Lucca.

"Umm, people like the adrenaline rush?"

Lucca threw his hands up in the air. "I give up. I'm not going to understand this part of Meeden culture ever."

"If we ever end up going out together as a squad to the movies, we definitely need to avoid horror movies." I whispered to Tokieda-senpai.

"Agreed."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"I have to say. In just one day, you've shown great improvement in using kogetsu." Tachikawa-senpai said.

Next day, I was once again at lessons with Tachikawa. We took a break in the middle of our matches to go over what skills I had managed to acquire during the lessons. Aside from that, the ranked wars for B-class teams were about to start soon, so I wanted to finish up a little bit earlier than usual to go watch. Granted, I could still make it back to my squad's operation room in time to watch the start of the matches, so I didn't really need to rush.

I frowned. "It's not good enough yet, is it?"

"Well, no. But you're improving significantly than most people in your position would. I think we're at the point where you can start learning to use senku along with kogetsu."

"Senku's the extension for kogetsu that extends its blade length, right?"

"Yep. That's the one."

"Alright. So what are we waiting for?"

"Just one thing, actually. I heard about this from Izumi, who heard about this from Satori (I had a bad feeling about this right away), but apparently you can't handle horror movies? Satori took a video and showed Izumi the other day." Tachikawa asked with a teasing grin.

… I am going to kill Satori when I get back. And then bring him back to life, and then kill him again. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it.

* * *

 **Well, that's a wrap on that chapter.**

 **For those of you wanting more action, don't worry. You'll get it soon enough. I've been avoiding them for two reasons mainly. First, they're a hassle to write and take up more words when I want a bit more content. Second, I suck at writing action/fight scenes. They're not my specialty.**

 **So yeah, if you want an idea of where the timeline is at, it's the first day of ranked wars, just before they start.**

 **As always, R &R**

 **XWX**


	11. Chapter 11

**I'll be changing the formatting a very slight bit. Nothing big to worry about. It'll just make things easier to follow.**

* * *

POV: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

"Huh? Where's Satori?" I asked.

I had just gotten back to our operation room after about fifteen more matches of using Kogetsu with Tachikawa. Ranked matches were starting and I wanted to see how this would go.

"At the ranked wars viewing room. He's doing the commentary along with Mikumo for this match."

I blinked in surprise. "Isn't Tamakoma-2 in this upcoming battle?"

"Mikumo still has some injuries, so he'll be commentating today."

"I see. Run me through with how these battles work again?"

"It's pretty much a kill is one point, while surviving until the end of the match gives you another point. It's usually a three-way or four-way fight, with teams having up to four members. Usually they go with three though. You're warped into random locations once the battle starts, so you won't be instantly grouped with everyone else in your squad."

"Got it. So who wants to take bets on how fast Tamakoma will win this first battle?" I asked.

"Really Lucca? Are you sure you want to be giving Tamakoma the victory so easily?" Kitora asked.

I shrugged. "Hey, I knew Yuma from years ago. Knowing him, it won't take that long to win. Probably less than twenty seconds of action for each of the other squads."

When he made contact with the first group of people, he took about three seconds to take them all out.

"Well that's fast." I commented.

"Alright, fine. You were right about that. But what about the other squad?"

Judging from the viewing camera, they were all hiding in a single building. Problem was, they didn't have bagworms. Even so, they all used hound, so they could theoretically overwhelm Yuma with firepower.

All the same, I groaned at their positioning. "If Yuma has meteor, then they're going to get flushed out in seconds and destroyed. If he doesn't, that's an opportunity wasted."

"Not really." Arashiyama commented.

"What do you—"

Anything else that I might have said was cut off by the giant blast of trion that destroyed the building. A few seconds later, Yuma cut down everyone who was sent flying in the blast.

I was shocked. "What the hell was that?"

"That would be Amatori. She has a ridiculous amount of trion."

Wait a second. Amatori as in Chika Amatori? The same little girl that I saw when I visited Tamakoma? I thought she was an operator. Guess not. But HOLY, that trion ability is massive.

 _If I were to guess, she probably has even more trion than I did._

"You sure about that, Aria?"

 _Positive. That trion amount is astounding._

"Agreed."

 _But how is her trion organ so large? It's like she's on a whole different level._

"Well, trion capacity is somewhat related to chance."

 _Let's be real, Lucca. There was no way our talents were acquired by chance._

"Hey Lucca, Aria, we're heading out to grab something to eat. If you need us, give me a call." Arashiyama said.

We may eat together quite often as a squad, but there are times when we don't, so that works out just fine for us. Besides, Aria and I were starting to get pretty deep into conversation, so this was good for us.

After they left, Aria and I continued were we left off. "Even if we weren't chance, there are others out there who probably gained their abilities by chance."

 _Fair enough._

A knock on the door of our operation room pulled me and Aria out of our thoughts about Chika quite abruptly. That ended our discussion pretty quickly.

When I opened it, I was surprised to see Rei standing there. And then I remembered what she asked me yesterday regarding talking with Aria. I guess she's here to make good on that promise.

"You want to talk to Aria?" I asked.

Rei nodded. "You said yesterday that I could come in and talk to her today, right?"

Right. I did say that. "Hold on a moment. Let me go set things up so that Aria can connect with your trion body to talk. Pass me your trigger, please?"

After Rei deactivated her trigger and handed it to me, I went over to the computer and used it to link her trigger with Armatus so that she could talk with Aria at any time. Even though we had set up a speaker in the room so that everyone could hear Aria, it helped to connect her to triggers so we could talk outside of the operations room. I may be relatively new to Meeden technology, but I learned quickly.

Once I finished, I handed Rei's trigger back to her. It took a couple of minutes, but I got it to work.

"Alright, let's see if I set up the link correctly. Activate the trigger now."

Once Rei activated her trigger, Aria stated talking.

 _Testing, testing, is this working?_

Rei started. "I can hear her!"

I chuckled. "Rei, meet Aria. She's been with me for a while. On that matter, do you want to go grab something to eat?"

Rei was a slight bit confused. "I thought I needed to be here to talk with Aria."

I shook my head. "You need to be within reasonable distance of my trigger to talk with her, now that I've linked her up with your trigger. Or if you want, I can go grab something for you and then come back. Anything you want in particular?"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

"You sure it's a good idea to just leave me here by myself?" I asked.

Lucca shrugged. "We've slowly been expanding Aria's field of senses. There are actually a few cameras set up just for her vision, a couple of sound receptors for hearing, as well as a speaker in case she wants to talk with us, which is quite often. She pretty much works as security for the room, so I'm not that worried."

 _True enough. As an AI, I can occupy more than one space at once, the spaces being Lucca's trigger as well as a central hub that Ayatsuji set up for me so I can access at least some of my senses. Personally, I'd rather just stay here. It's weird being hooked up to Lucca's senses all the time. Though if Lucca goes too far away, I'll immediately disconnect and go back to his trigger. Don't worry about making a mess either, though I'm sure you won't. Almost everyone in Arashiyama squad is really big on making sure things are orderly."_

That's a lot of information to take in all at once. "Well, if you insist, I'll stay here."

 _Perfect! We can have some nice girl talk then._

"Ok, you know what? I'm out. Anything you want to eat, Rei?" Lucca asked.

"Something along the lines of Italian food." That sounds good about now.

"Italian?" Lucca's questioned mirrored Aria's thoughts at the exact same moment.

I had to resist the urge to smack myself. They're still learning. Of course they wouldn't know what Italian meant. "Something along the lines of pasta."

"Ohh. Ok. That thing that takes forever to make by hand." Lucca said.

"Alright, is there anything that you can't cook?" I asked. I feel like Lucca has tried to cook almost everything by now.

Lucca seemed to tip his head back in thought for the moment. "There was this one dish back in Liberi that I tried to make…"

 _Are you talking about the one that exploded on you because you added a teeny bit too much fuego seasoning?_

"No, Aria, the fuego seasoning was not the reason for that dish exploding. If anything, I didn't put enough of it."

 _Oh shut up. Lucian told you that the fuego seasoning would create a reaction from being mixed with the fish meat._

"For your information, I managed to recreate that dish just fine when I came here."

 _That's because Meeden's fish don't seem to have that same chemical in their bodies. And you still put too much!_

This really makes me wish that I had siblings now.

"Anyway, I'll go grab something for you. Just stay here for now." Lucca said.

After Lucca left, I deactivated my trigger and spoke to Aria. "You two really have that sibling dynamic down."

 _I like to think that it's something that we acquired as twins. After all, Lucca and I pretty much lived by ourselves._

"What about your parents?" I asked.

 _That's more complicated. They were technically around, but the only place where they influenced our upbringing was in Lucca's military training. Put simply, they were terrible parents. If anything, Lucca's mentor, Lucian, was more of a father than our father was._

"Is that why Lucca hates them?"

 _Yes and no. You remember Lucca told you that I had a weak body, right? Well despite my body's condition, I was born with a ridiculous amount of trion. Our father was considering turning me into a source of trion, but Lucca protested against it, offering to do double of what he normally did for the military in exchange for letting me stay free from military use, despite that being the original intention of our birth._

I was confused "Hold on, wha—"

 _We were military experiments used to see what would happen when you put together the two strongest trigger users in Liberi._ Aria said bluntly. _I was born with an enormous trion organ, while Lucca was born with his side effect as well as another hidden talent._

"What exactly does his side effect do? He's described it, but I've never truly seen it in use." I asked.

 _That's because it's active at all times. Even though it's in use all the time, Lucca can focus for a few minutes to increase its potency, though at the cost of giving him a killer headache. To put very simply, his side effect is enhanced observation. At maximum potency, his brain absorbs in every single piece of information that his eyes and ears can take in, allowing him to diagnose things from people's physical conditions and patterns in movement to how long it can take for a bullet to hit a target down to a millisecond and where it will hit the moment it fires. He's at most off by maybe a fraction of a centimeter when at maximum ability, and that's because wind is unpredictable. You literally cannot say any secrets when he can see your lips moving because he can read them without any trouble. And because he takes in so much information, he can formulate tons of strategies on the fly. It gave him a reputation as an expert of defensive tactics._

"That… sounds overwhelmingly powerful." I commented slowly.

 _It is. He does love complaining about it though. Sometimes I think he wishes that it was less overwhelming._

"But what about his other hidden talent?" I asked.

 _Secret!_

"Wha- Aria! Come on!"

 _Hey, I can't go revealing EVERYTHING to you right when we first talk. But here's what you should know. Lucca doesn't realize that he has this other talent, seeing as he uses it unconsciously, and only when he is on his last legs or in a truly desperate state. The only reason I know is because I saw him use it to protect me once._

I guess I should be happy that I even got that information out of her. Still, I think I understand Lucca a little bit better.

There's something else that I've been wondering as well. "Do the two of you not have a last name?"

 _Actually, we do. It's just that Lucca doesn't like associating with our parents, so he doesn't like using it. Personally, I don't have any problems. In Liberi, the Dux family is well known for producing top level soldiers. Lucca was just the latest._

"So your full names would technically be Lucca Dux and Aria Dux?" I asked.

 _Yep. Though we don't really affiliate with it that much. That aside, I know that you and Lucca are nowhere near dating, but what do you think about my brother?_

…I really hope that Aria didn't see my face go red for a moment. Though she probably did, given that she's got full vision of the room. "Well…"

 _Alright, what do you like about him?_

Yeah, she definitely noticed. "W-well, he's really kind. And it's kind of cute watching him learn the culture here. Not to mention how considerate he is… of me in particular."

 _And yet you don't want to pursue a relationship with him? The two of you could be perfect together._

"It's not like I've done anything for him." I sighed. While I resigned myself to the fact that I did have feelings of a sort for him, it's sort of been a one-way thing, with Lucca being the person doing things for me while I did almost nothing. "Honestly, I feel like I'm just an extra bit of responsibility for him."

 _That really isn't true, you know. You've actually done a lot for him, just by letting him do all that stuff for you. He gets bored really easily and becomes unpredictable if you let him, so doing this will keep him focused. And besides, I think he feels something for you as well._

"How can you tell?"

 _I'm his sister. Of course I can tell. All that aside though, I haven't seen him care as much for other people as much as he has for you. The only other person I could compare that level of care to is myself. And sibling bonds are naturally like that._

"So what do I do about it?" I asked.

 _Make the first move or something. I dunno. I'm not the expert on relationships and neither is Lucca. Even if he was engaged at one point._

"Wait, Lucca was engaged?" It almost felt like I was shot right through the heart.

 _It was technically supposed to be a political marriage to forge an alliance with this one nation, but Lucca asked father to call it off because said nation was really weak and Lucca found a way to make them subordinate to us without too much trouble. Don't worry, it was purely political and nothing actually happened between them._

I almost breathed a sigh of relief.

At this point my face was hitting a very dark red when Lucca came back with the food.

"I'm back… Rei, your face is red. Did something happen? Do you have a fever?" Lucca asked.

As if to accentuate Aria's point from earlier, Lucca placed his hand on my head to check my temperature. "Hmm, seems fine. Maybe it just got a little hot in here."

"N-no. I'm fine. You don't need to turn down the temperature." I managed to get out.

This might turn out to be a very awkward lunch for me.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Jun Arashiyama

* * *

"Are you sure we should have left Lucca and Aria back in the operation room?" I asked Kitora.

Ayatsuji was the one to answer that question. "Well, Nasu-san did want to visit to talk to Aria, and it's easiest to talk to Aria when we're in the operations room because of all the stuff we set up for her."

"And besides, we should at least give them some privacy. Especially after all that spying and teasing that you guys did to them." Kitora said.

Alright, maybe we deserved that. But still, how could I not be curious? Especially after Lucca mentioned that he didn't have a crush on her. And then promptly went out with her to get coffee the next day.

"Still, is it alright to leave them like that? Ken might get into a teasing mode again once we get back to the operations room." I said.

"Well, we should at least give Nasu-san a chance with Lucca, right? After all, she does like him."

"Alright, where are you two getting this from?"

"Call it a woman's intuition." Ayatsuji winked.

Woman are strange in how they seem to know things sometimes. "So should we expect things to get awkward from here on out?"

"Probably."

We actually saw Nasu-san on the way back to the operations room. And she looked really red. As in embarrassed red. Connecting the dots was somewhat tricky, seeing as we had no idea what happened there.

Lucca was just walking out of the operations room with a couple of trays and plates when we saw him.

"Oh, Arashiyama. I was just about to take these back to the cafeteria." Lucca said.

"Nevermind that. Why was Nasu's face red?" I asked.

"Her face? Oh, I'm actually not sure. Just before she left, she asked if I wanted to go watch a movie with her at her place tomorrow. I figured it wouldn't hurt so I said yes. Afterwards, she went red, said bye, and left the room. I'm not sure why she turned red." Lucca said, clearly confused as to her reaction.

The rest of us, on the other hand, were not. Especially given the conversation we had before we got here. As Lucca went to return the trays, we decided to ask Aria what happened, with Satori getting back just as we started asking.

Fortunately, Aria was in the mood to explain. _It pretty much happened how Lucca described it. And before you ask, Lucca has no idea that Rei likes him. And I'm not about to tell him. If anything, he should figure it out himself, though he's not all that familiar with relationships. Neither am I, but it's not like I can date people when I'm an AI._

That's actually a horrifying thought if you think about it. She's pretty much doomed to stay in that trigger for as long as the trigger isn't destroyed. And there's nothing she can do about it.

 _By the way, someone needs to tell Rei to be careful with ordering or making coffee for Lucca. We've lucked out for the most part because Lucca prefers decaf, but if another incident like that happens…_

We all shuddered as we remembered the one morning where we gave Lucca some coffee that was a slight bit stronger than normal.

 _Flashback_

" _Man, Lucca. You look exhausted." I commented._

 _Lucca shrugged. "I was up all night with those Japanese books. I finally finished and memorized them."_

" _Oh. That's great! Need some coffee? It'll help perk you up." Ayatsuji said._

" _I'll take some, thanks." Lucca said, starting to sip on the cup of coffee._

 _When he was only halfway finished, he suddenly dropped the cup._

" _Is something wrong, Lucca?" Tokieda asked, somewhat concerned._

" _W-what was in t-that coffee?" Lucca asked, starting to stutter._

" _Huh? We just put some extra caffeine in there. Figured you could use it. What's wrong?"_

 _Lucca started muttering numbers to himself as he tried to figure out what was wrong. "I-I'm not sure, but f-for s-some r-r-reason, my vision is turning f-funny and one point five eight two meters from the floor to the tip of Arashiyama's index finger, four point nine seven nine centimeters from Ayatsuji's shoulder to the closest tip of hair, thirty one thousand two hundred and fifty three follicles of Satori's hair pointing off to the side, the distance from the tip of Kitora's left thumb to the sleeve of the jacket is point one four three millimeters shorter than the right thumb, the top right star on the emblem on Tokieda's jacket is point zero two three millimeters off, making it unsymmetrical. The chairs for the table are not perfectly aligned, the one Arashiyama is sitting on is three point seven four zero five centimeters farther away…"_

What in the world did you do?! There are tons of numbers floating around Lucca's eyes! _Aria practically screamed at us, the concern for her twin brother evident in her tone._

 _We could only stare as Lucca rattled off more and more numbers in a nonsensical manner. "Everyone's collars are slightly off center, with Satori's being off the most by two centimeters and one point three millimeters, the computer is half a centimeter off center, as well as two point seven degrees unaligned with the edge of the desk."_

Someone knock him out. NOW. _Aria said._

 _Kitora took immediate action, knocking out Lucca with a good conk on the head._

" _What in the world was that?" I asked, shocked._

I'm not completely sure about this, but I think the caffeine in Lucca's system supercharged his side effect for a few moments. He's never gone to that many decimals before. At the same time, I think it overloaded his brain. _Aria said._

" _Let's hope the caffeine's taken its course when he wakes up. That was really scary…"_

 _When Lucca woke up a few minutes later, he had no recollection of what happened. All of us agreed on one thing. Never let Lucca near caffeine again._

 _Flashback End_

"Yeah, I don't think any of us want a repeat of that." I said.

"Maybe if we can control it, we can improve the performance that Lucca has in battle." Kitora looked thoughtful.

 _Not a chance. He'd get distracted by too much information coming in. Even Lucca's brain has its limits._

"So who's going to tell Nasu-san about it?" I asked.

Kitora sighed. "I'll go tell her right now."

I nodded. "Thanks, Kitora."

 _By the way, you guys want to hear a story about how Lucca was at one point engaged to a girl?_ Aria asked, apparently feeling somewhat mischievous.

"Give us the details." Satori said, a grin slowly growing on his face. "This sounds really good."

Well, if Aria is offering, who are we to complain?

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person

* * *

"So pretty much avoid coffee with extra caffeine?"

"Just avoid caffeine altogether. Trust me. It'll make your date go a lot smoother."

"It's not a date."

"For the sake of convenience, let's just call it that."

"So no caffeine. What happens if he does take in caffeine?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know. I still find it scary."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

When I returned back to the operation room, everyone looked at me, as if expecting something.

"What?" I asked.

Satori was looking somewhat smug. "Oh nothing. Aria was just telling us a bit about this one time you apparently got engaged to a girl. Care to fill us in on the details?"

…Goddammit Aria. "Let's see… she was the daughter of the leader of Lingea, a tiny country without that many resources to go with. The engagement was apparently supposed to ally our two nations. It didn't really work out for Lingea. We ended up just forcing them to become subordinate to us because they were way weaker and we promised to help them if they ever got into trouble."

"And the girl?" Satori asked.

Man, is that all he wants to hear about?

"Haile Bakas—"

"Baka?" Satori asked, somewhat confused. Figures that he would confuse it with the Japanese word for idiot.

"Bakas." I corrected him. "Though believe it or not, she was actually kind of an idiot. Red hair, yellow eyes. She was pretty much used as a peace offering because she had no real influence in anything."

"But was she hot?"

"If you want, I can launch you through a portal to Lingea and see for yourself." I said drily.

 _Oh don't be like that, Lucca. She was at least decent-looking, if anything. Granted, she was an absolute jerk to me, so I didn't like her. Still though, credit where it's due._

"That's really all there is to it. She thought she was hot stuff because she was a leader's child. It really isn't that much of an achievement when your parent is the leader of a small country."

"I take it her attitude didn't go over well with either of you?" Kitora asked.

"When you're a member of a family that's as prestigious as ours, you tend not to be impressed by other people's pedigrees. I don't like our family, but that didn't stop them from producing the best soldiers that our military has ever known."

"And you still had to work for your food? Despite being in a prestigious family?" Tokieda was curious.

 _You're thinking of the nobility. If you're in the military, you have to work. It's how the Liberi military keeps it soldiers responsible. It doesn't matter if you're part of a noble family or you're the freaking leader of the entire nation. If you're in the military, you work for your pay. Plain and simple. Besides, the Dux family wasn't so much a noble family as much as it was a talented family._

"But enough about home. Is the information for this month's recruitment processed yet?" I asked.

Arashiyama nodded. "You'll be part of the guide for enlistment the day after tomorrow. You'll be with me and Kitora helping to facilitate the training room as well as using your side effect to assess the trainees for those that perform the best. Alright?"

I nodded. "Understood, captain."

"Well then, you can enjoy your date with your girlfriend tomorrow without any troubles."

"WE ARE NOT DATING!"

* * *

 **This last part feels somewhat choppy, but I'll roll with it.**

 **The focus next chapter will probably be along the lines of**

 **1\. The (not) date**

 **2\. Enlistment day**

 **Until then. I really hope my finals don't kill me.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Lucca and Rei may not call it a date, but it's a date by definition.**

* * *

POV: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

What do I do? Do I try and make something for Lucca? Maybe a cup of coffee— No, Kitora told me to avoid that. What exactly makes Lucca so scary when he gets a large dose of caffeine? Aria's going to be there also, so will that be weird?

"Nasu-senpai! I'm heading out. Try to have fun, alright?"

Sure, like I can do that when I'm panicking over what I should do when Lucca gets here. Movies are going to be part of it, but I don't know what else we'll be doing.

"Oh! It's snowing outside." Kumagai said.

Huh? I looked outside to see a light layer of snow on the ground. That's a rare occurrence. You pretty much never see snow here.

A few minutes after Kumagai left, I heard talking outside the door.

"Oh come on, Aria. How was I supposed to know that Meeden was going to get this cold? No one from the squad ever told us about this kind of weather. Besides, how was I supposed to prepare for it when I was out buying some stuff?"

Maybe I should make some hot chocolate. That would probably help with the cold.

A short pause later, the voice (clearly Lucca), continued. "Give me a break. You were the one who asked me to create a new link-up system so you didn't have to use my eyes and ears all the time when we're outside the base. I can't be bothered to worry about the cold."

A short moment later, I could hear knocking at the door. Even though I probably should have just opened it when I heard Lucca's voice, I took my time and opened the door to a very chilled Lucca, who was wearing a very thin jacket. Clearly not prepared for the cold.

"Alright, w-what was all that crunchy starchy stuff on the ground?" Lucca asked, teeth chattering.

"Starchy?" That's the first time I've heard snow described like that.

"Well, it s-sounds like starch when I step on it."

I had a small giggle at this. "It's called snow, it's technically little bits of frozen water that usually appears in winter. Japan doesn't get that much snow though, so you rarely ever see this much."

 _So it is snow. Just like what they have over in Kion. I told you, Lucca!_ Aria's voice came out of nowhere.

I blinked. "Did I just hear Aria's voice?"

"Oh yeah, that." Lucca said, pulling out what appeared to be a 360 degree camera with a speaker attached to it. "Aria and I went to go buy this s-stuff so that she didn't have to look at everything from my eyes all the time. I-it gets somewhat tiring s-seeing things from my eyes. Took us about an hour to link up everything, but it was worth it. It also has a s-speaker so she can talk. Ayatsuji helped us set it up. It's p-pretty neat."

 _Not to mention that I won't be stuck having to see what Lucca sees. I can look around on my own with this camera. Next thing we need to do is add legs to this so I can move also. Also, Lucca, your teeth are chattering._

"Alright, first get in. You're going to catch a cold if you stand out there." I said.

"T-thanks." Lucca's teeth chattered.

Once he got in and took a few minutes warming up, we continued on. "So you're restoring Aria's ability to move independently?"

Lucca chuckled, placing Aria's makeshift camera on the counter. "Pretty much. Though on a different note, why haven't I seen it snow before?"

"Probably because we don't get that much snow here. The conditions usually aren't optimal for us to have snow in this area. By the way, what's Kion?"

"Oh yeah, Kion. One of the stronger defensive nations in the Neighborhood, they're pretty much the land of eternal winter. Last I remember, they weren't on friendly terms with Liberi, though that might have to do with the fact that Liberi is currently on a five-battle winning streak against them, even without me commanding. But I digress. Is snow just there or is there something that people do with it?"

I let myself reminisce a bit as I thought about it. "Well, if there's more snow, people do play in it from time to time. There are a lot of things that you can do with snow."

"Like what?"

"Hold on a second." I may be acting a little bit impulsive, but Lucca's reaction is going to be well worth it.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

I watched as Rei put on a heavy jacket along with some gloves and went out, apparently to do something. It took only a moment later for me to find out what it was. I have to say, I did not expect her throwing arm to be that good. I got a face full of snow.

"Snowball fights are pretty fun when there's enough snow on the ground." Rei said with a light laugh, though I'm pretty sure that she was resisting the urge to laugh even more.

As I wiped the snow off my face, I couldn't help but smile as well. It was pretty funny, after all. "I'm going to have to remember that for the next time it snows."

"You might have to wait a while then. It's only about a month until spring and it usually doesn't snow here. Winter's the only time that it snows, if it does at all."

I sighed. "A pity. So what's on the agenda for today?"

"Well, I did pick out a couple of movies that probably won't scare you like that one horror movie did, so that's an option."

I shuddered. Never that movie again. As long as it doesn't involve all that blood streaming down the eyes, I should be alright…

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Aria Dux

* * *

This is such a nice change from what I usually see from Lucca. He's really happy now. Usually he just stays all composed and concerned for people, never really smiling happily. Even in the squad, he barely ever cracks a smile, unless he's feeling somewhat embarrassed or he's cooking. Maybe when he's feeling rather teasing as well. It kind of makes him like Kitora in a sense.

But here, he's so much more relaxed. It's like being with Rei puts him at ease. I think they've gone through like three movies already, laughing together and enjoying hot chocolate. Rei seems to be nodding off though. So glad that I'm not stuck to looking through Lucca's eyes. It gives me completely unhindered view of the movie. It's still fascinating how Meeden has people dedicated to creating these effects that make them look realistic, if rather unfeasible.

"There's no way that spear should've gone that far through his body. Given the speed using a human's reaction time and the slow motion effects used to measure the force with which it was hurled, the spear should have gone at best half a meter through his body. Probably should've severed his spine as well, given the entry and exit point of the wound. Thus, the spear should not have hit the second person."

And then there's Lucca, who simply must find fault with everything. I guess. Can't blame him though. His side effect probably drives him nuts at times.

On the other hand, Rei looked rather green. "That's… a gruesome image."

 _Could be worse, you know. You could have Lucca's side effect and end up making all these analyses by accident._

One horror movie later though, Lucca was once again shivering in the corner, while Rei patted him on the back and tried to get him back up. It was pretty funny to watch.

As the two of them continued watching movies, I noticed Rei slowly getting closer and closer to Lucca as she continued explaining the kind of entertainment that people got from each genre of movies.

A couple hours later, Rei fell asleep on Lucca's shoulder.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

I noticed a slight weight on my shoulder while we were watching our third movie. Rei had fallen asleep without me noticing.

She must be really tired. I wonder how long she took to pick these movies. Must have been a while.

 _You might want to get her to bed. Probably for the best that she gets proper rest._

"Yeah, you're right, Aria. Mind watching over her until she wakes up so she doesn't get confused? I'm going to make dinner."

 _Sure! No problem at all._

I carried Rei over to her bed before lying her down in it and pulling a blanket over her. She's probably really tired. I grabbed Aria's camera for good measure as well, just to make sure she was alright.

It's weird, though. Being with Rei makes me relax naturally. I can forget being all about protocol and professionalism when I'm with her. It makes me… happy, I guess. I want to protect that to the best of my ability. Which is why I proceeded with what I did next.

 _Lucca, what are you doing?_ Aria asked with some alarm.

I ignored Aria, instead bending down over Rei and kissing her on the forehead. Twice. It's a simple gesture to everyone else, but in Liberi, it has a very special meaning. "If you will have it, I will be your shield for all eternity."

 _Lucca… are you sure you want to do this? You know the implications of what you just did, right?_ Aria asked.

"I'm sure, Aria."

Aria took a few seconds to think about what I did before finally responding. _It's your life, Lucca. If you really believe that what you're doing is the right choice, then I won't stop you._

"Thanks, Aria."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

Dinner must have almost been ready when I woke up, because the smell of the food practically wafted up into my room as I opened my eyes.

 _Oh! You're awake._

I turned to the stand where Aria's makeshift camera stand was, apparently keeping watch the entire time.

"What happened?" I asked her.

 _Well, you fell asleep, Lucca carried you upstairs, kissed you twice on the forehead, and then went down to make dinner. Don't worry about getting up, by the way. Lucca's bringing the food up once he finishes cooking._

I felt my face heat up. "He carried me upstairs? And kissed me?"

 _Don't get the wrong idea regarding the kiss. In Liberi, we have a very different meaning for giving two kisses to the forehead._

That got my attention. "What does the double kiss on the forehead mean?"

 _The Difand oath, named after the first person who swore this oath. It's an oath of ultimate dedication. Even the personal guard of most people don't swear this oath. Lucca's guard was an exception to this rule, as each and every single one of them was our friend as well as guard._

"So what does it mean?"

 _It's the equivalent of saying this: 'If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.' Quite literally the ultimate oath. While there's nothing physically binding about it, the one who swears this oath is usually completely willing to lay down his or her life the person whom they swear the oath to. Outside of Lucca's guard, I have seen this oath used only once. I've even heard that in the past, people who swore this oath would become black triggers so that they could continue to protect their charges even in death._

I could only sit there shocked. Lucca? Willing to lay his life down for me? We've only known each other for a couple of weeks. How could he do that so quickly?

 _Don't worry about it. If anything, I'd say you're making progress._

"Is there anything I should do in response to this oath?"

 _Don't reject it. There are some oaths out there you simply do not reject. This is one of them._

"Well, how do I accept it then?" I asked.

 _Kiss his forehead. It's how you accept his oath of protection. There's some verbal things that go along with this, but that's not the important part of the oath._

"I mean, is there something verbal that I can do?"

 _Well, yes. I can try and teach you the words, but I don't remember them completely._

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

I carried the tray with dinner upstairs. To my (slight) surprise, Rei was awake.

"Oh. You're awake."

Rei blinked in surprise. "Aria said literally the same thing when I woke up."

I shrugged. "We're twins. We're bound to have a lot of things that we do similarly."

 _After all, that is what we do best. But that aside, Rei has something that she wants to tell you, Lucca._

"Hmm?"

It took Rei a few moments to gather her words. "I accept this oath. Just as you are bound to me, so I am bound to you. From now until forever."

She finished the ritual with a kiss to my forehead. I shook my head in amusement. "I'm guessing Aria taught you that. There's just one thing though. The last line isn't 'From now until forever'."

 _Wait, you mean I messed it up?_ Aria asked.

I nodded. "The correct words are actually 'Until fate decrees us separate.'"

 _Well EXCUSE me for not getting it right._

Rei pouted. "And I put so much work into memorizing it too."

"The only thing you needed to do was kiss the forehead, so it really doesn't matter. But all oath-swearing stuff aside, let's eat. Carrying this tray is starting to get a little tiring."

I heard the door opening a moment later, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the voices.

"Rei, are you home?" An older, male voice asked from below.

"She's probably asleep, dear. No need to worry about her now."

Rei clearly thought otherwise, as she rushed as fast as her body would let her downstairs. I followed right behind her, putting Aria's camera stand in my body.

When we got downstairs, Rei practically ran up to the two people who had entered and gave them a hug. "Okaa-san! Otou-san! You're back from your business trip."

Rei's mother chuckled. "Well, looks like I was wrong about her being asleep."

I will not lie, I was somewhat envious of the scene before me. Aria and I were never able to really enjoy a family environment like this. Well, there was Lucian, but he was more like a surrogate father for us.

"Well, Rei? Are you going to introduce us to your friend?" Her father asked.

Oh. Well this is awkward. Rei seemed to realize this at the same moment as me, as she started explaining the best she could without straight up mentioning that I was a Neighbor. "This is Lucca Dux. He's the newest member of Arashiyama Squad at Border, and a foreigner."

Well, she's technically not wrong. The only problem with wording it like that is…

"Really? So what are you doing at our home, Lucca?"

I scratched the back of my head in slight embarrassment. "Well, your daughter and I first became friends when I first moved in. She helped me with a lot of the culture shock I was experiencing at the time."

"So what are you doing here?"

"I invited him, otou-san." Rei said. "He wanted to learn more about movies, so I invited him to watch a few with me."

Rei's father raised his eyebrow at me. "Did you not have movies where you came from, Mr…?"

I realized he didn't know my last name. "Dux, sir. That's my last name. And no, there were no movies where I come from."

"And where do you come from?" Rei's mother asked.

Shit. No way out of this. I took a deep breath. "Try not to panic when, but I come from the other side of this world. I'm what you call a Neighbor."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

The biggest shock to both me and Lucca was that my parents didn't instantly panic or try to kick him out of the house/kill him. Instead, my father just blinked in surprise. "A Neighbor? You certainly don't look like one of those large things that we see in the news."

Lucca blinked in surprise. "You're not going to panic? Or try to kill me?"

"Well, you certainly haven't given us a reason to. I can see why you tried to avoid telling us you're a Neighbor, but compared to all perceptions of them, you don't really look like them."

"Probably because public perception of Neighbors is that they're the white things with creepy eyes that the rest of us call trion soldiers. Biologically speaking, I'm pretty much human. There might be some slight differences, but I haven't really seen them."

Mother sighed. "Why don't we talk about this over dinner? You must be hungry."

Lucca scratched the back of his head. "Not really… I can cook pretty much anything, and I had just finished cooking dinner for your daughter when you got here. I can probably take a few minutes to cook a couple more dishes and then we can all eat together."

For some reason, both of my parents' eyes lit us when he mentioned this. "Well if that's what you want, then we'll certainly take you up on your offer." My father said.

I didn't let it show, but I was somewhat exasperated. This is going to be a long night.

* * *

After Lucca finally left, and I was about to go sleep, my mother came to my room to ask a question. "Rei, do you like Lucca?"

Obviously enough, I was not expecting that question. "W-where is this coming from?"

I got a chuckle as a response. "Well that answers my question. It seemed somewhat obvious from the way that you were acting around him, as if you thought we wouldn't approve or something. And he does seem like a good man."

"Okaa-san, I'm only 17."

"So? 17 isn't too early to start thinking about your future."

"Just let me sleep." I turned over in my bed to hide my embarrassment. First my squad, then Arashiyama Squad, now my parents are getting into this too. I get the feeling this isn't going away anytime soon.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

Enlistment started relatively early the next day, which sucked. I was still a tad bit sleepy. I mean, I'm used to having to stay up for days on end (There was this one time where I had to coordinate Liberi's defenses for more than five days without rest simply because the enemy nation was stubbornly stupid about throwing out their resources to attack us. It was easily the most tediously tiring battle that I have ever had to manage to date), but there's a huge difference between staying up late to get important stuff done and staying up late to explain to someone's parents what a Neighbor is doing in their world. What was even stranger was that they didn't seem particularly adverse to the idea that their daughter was friends with a Neighbor. If anything, they were more curious about what it was like in the Neighborhood.

"Someone looks tired. Spend a long time at your girlfriend's house?" Satori asked, apparently feeling mischievous.

I responded by punching him in the face, which sent him flying across the room. "We're not dating."

Kitora sighed. "You could at least be a little bit less volatile with Satori teases you like that. I mean, sure you had a long day yesterday, but reacting like that isn't necessary."

 _Exhaustion makes vile people out of the best of us. Not that I would know, anyway. If anything, I was always one to sleep too much._ Aria said.

"Fair enough. But did you spend a while there? It's not like you had to be there all day."

"You try telling someone's parents that you're a Neighbor and get away without them asking any questions." I said.

Tokieda frowned. "They didn't react badly, did they?"

I shook my head. "That's the part that confuses me. If anything, they were more curious about what life was like in the Neighborhood."

Kitora blinked in surprise. "That's… interesting."

"That's one way of putting it." I grumbled under my breath.

Arashiyama handed me a datapad. "Anyway, here's the list of all the new trainees coming in today. Once we split the group, your job will be to observe the trainees and note the ones that seem to do better in some areas then others. You'll be in the control room with Suwa and Tsutsumi. They have close-up view of all the training rooms."

I nodded. "That'll help me analyze each trainee better as they begin each session. I'll have Aria send down data of anyone who I think is good at something else that doesn't involve cutting or blowing up trion soldiers."

"Sounds good. Keep us updated as things go along."

"Right. I'll see you at the training room, squad leader."

"Eh? You're not going to stay for the introduction?" Kitora asked.

I shook my head. "I don't like standing around as a mascot. I only stood on ceremony back in Liberi because I was ordered to."

"Well then, as your squad leader, I order you to stay for the ceremony along with the rest of us." Arashiyama said with a slight smile, knowing exactly how I would respond to an order.

Dammit.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Jun Arashiyama

* * *

General Manager Shinoda welcomed the new trainees with one of his speeches. "Welcome, I am General Manager Masafumi Shinoda. As of today, you are all C-class members, which means you are all trainees at Border. Regardless, the future of the people of Mikado City depends on you and all who will join in the future."

"Rather dark for an introduction, don't you think?" Lucca asked from where we were standing offstage.

"Don't be a killjoy, Lucca. He's being honest with them. This is an important job, after all." I said.

"Hey, it's a nice introduction. It's just a little dark." Lucca replied.

That was all the time we had for small talk, as the General Manager threw things over to us. "Arashiyama Squad will handle the rest of the explanation from here."

With that, we walked onstage, with two people standing on either side of me. I put Lucca next to Kitora so Satori wouldn't get punched in the face again.

"It's Arashiyama Squad! The real deal!"

"Arashiyama-san!"

"Is that a new member of theirs?"

"Are those eyes real? They look really cool."

 _Well, everyone's popular._ Aria commented with an amused air.

We couldn't really respond because everyone was looking. Once things died down though, I started talking. "Alright, before we get on with your first day at Border, we'll split up the group according to position. People aspiring to be attackers and gunners will stay here, while the snipers will follow our member Satori to their training location."

As the snipers started filing out (there were eight or nine this time around), Lucca whispered in my ear. "What did he mean, are my eyes real? How could they not be real?"

"Hey, you are literally the only person I know who has silver eyes. Give them a break."

"Yet you guys seem to have everything else in the color spectrum when it comes to eye color." Lucca muttered under his breath.

Well, when he puts it like that… Oh. Satori left already. Need to address everyone else.

"As for the rest of you, follow me to the training rooms. Your training will begin there."

Once we got to the training room, Lucca excused himself to go to the control area with Suwa and Tsutsumi. He'll be able to give us a good overview from there.

"We'll start training off with a fighting exercise against a beginner-level Neighbor. It's been downsized for the sake of size, but I still encourage you guys to do your best to get as high of a score as you can."

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Ai Kitora

* * *

Once the first round of the training exercise started, I started scanning the crowd for signs of anyone who would be potentially good. Lucca beat me to it though.

 _Aria to Kitora, are you there?_

I pressed my hand to my ear. "I'm here. Did Lucca find anything yet, Aria?"

 _Lucca says the people in rooms 1 and 2 are probably going to be trigger-happy and waste trion, and to expect the person in room 5 to get the exercise done in less than 40 seconds. Rooms 3 and 4 will probably take anywhere between three to five minutes if they manage to succeed._

After seeing Lucca do more ridiculous things over these few weeks that I've known him, I'm not going to bother questioning his judgement. I checked the list to see who was in Room 5 at the moment. Other than the fact that she was a foreigner (American) by the name of Andrea Blake, nothing really stood out. Rooms 1 and 2 appeared to be twins by the name of Yoshi and Yuji Araki, while Room 3 was another foreigner (German) by the name of Richard Adler and Room 4 was a middle school student by the name of Eri Sakata.

True to Lucca's word, the twins were trigger-happy to a fault. While they did cause a lot of damage to the bamster that they were each fighting, they were unsuccessful in actually defeating it. Richard Adler did alright, taking about four minutes while Eri Sakata took only two and a half minutes (I could hear Aria making fun of Lucca in the background) to finish her exercise. Andrea was the one that was the least surprising as she finished in 36 seconds.

Aria contacted me directly a few seconds later. _Lucca's got the next round of analyses ready. And he thinks he might have found someone with some disposition for strategy. Want to hear it?_

"Alright, who does he think it is?"

Lucca really has a knack for this kind of thing.

* * *

 **That's a wrap on this chapter.**

 **Not sure what I want to focus on just yet next chapter. I'll update this chapter with next chapter's focus once I decide.**

 **On a more fun note: Once I finish my next chapter of Reaching Out, I'll be at a 1 to 2 ratio for chapters. (Reaching Out 2, Promises 1).**

 **Also: Every time I'm about to post a new chapter for Reaching Out or Promises, I always somehow end up mixing up the names of the main characters. It's happened to me at least 3 times now.**


	13. Chapter 13

**We'll be starting off with a scene from Ergatis. Where it goes from there is up to my wandering mind.**

* * *

POV: 3rd Person

* * *

"Dr. Lamia. It's a pleasure to see you again. How have things been for you?"

"Cordial as always, General Dux. Things have been going well over here. I see you've brought some soldiers with you. Might I ask what you need us for?" Dr. Lamia replied.

The head scientist of Ergatis and the supreme commander of Liberi saw eye to eye in one particular area. Results. For the both of them, the method didn't necessarily matter so much as the results did, which was why it was easy for Liberi and Ergatis to strike an alliance. While Lucca and Lucian had been the initial ambassadors, negotiations had opened up rather quickly once both nations found that they could benefit from said alliance.

"The orbit path of Ergatis is predicted to arrive near Meeden, correct? We'll be needing some of your trion soldiers and perhaps some extra assistance in retrieving one of our black triggers."

"Hmm. What do you plan to give in exchange for this, General? You know the negotiations that our nations have. If we help you with something, you'll help us with something as well."

"I think you'll find what we have to offer quite satisfactory." Auriel said, indicating a package that he had a few soldiers bring over. "The last time Aftokrator attacked us, they left behind something by accident. We managed to disable it for studying. As long as you can reverse-engineer it, it's all yours. We just need two."

Dr. Lamia looked inside the rather large container, her jaw almost dropping when she finally realized what it was. She finally managed to shift her expression into a devilish grin.

"You know, I believe we have a deal, General Dux." She said, already relishing the idea of getting to work on a rabbit, Aftokrator's strongest known trion soldier.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

Watching Rei mope was not my idea of socializing. I couldn't really blame her though. After all, they just had a rather depressing loss in the ranked wars against Suzunari-1. I will be honest, I didn't really expect anyone else to win that battle. Having the No. 4 Attacker in Border on your team is somewhat overpowered. Granted, the slight lack of skill in the rest of the squad made up for it somewhat, but Murakami is strong, especially with that side effect of his. I think the best way to describe it would be a somewhat weaker version of the observational portion of my side effect, which is still really strong.

"Lucca, how would you beat Murakami?" Rei asked.

I could have answered her instantly, but Kitora told me that taking my time makes me seem more normal to everyone. Well, if it keeps people from staring at me in the grocery store, I'll take it.

"Hmm. If I were to use your squad to defeat Murakami, I'd probably use Kumagai to keep him busy while you and Akane-chan focus fire on him. He's good, but like all attackers, if he can't get close he loses a lot of power. There's are exceptions to this rule, but Murakami doesn't use senku, so he's not an exception."

"And the rest of the squad?"

I shook my head. "Too much variability for a solid idea. The best course of action is to block them off from Murakami. Your squad could probably handle that, though you have to be careful of the other squads as well. You might be able to keep him at bay if you kept on the move by running along the walls, as Murakami isn't as proficient as you in moving along the buildings, though your chances of beating him by yourself are pretty small. Raygust is about as effective as a regular shield, if not stronger, because of its sturdiness. Though honestly, it'd probably be more effective to have someone else take him on."

"Who in B-rank is strong enough though?"

"Probably Yuma." I guessed. Yuma's learned a lot from his father, Yugo. And Yugo is easily one of the strongest guys I have ever met in my entire life.

"You mean Yuma Kuga? You two are friends, right? Which means he's a Neighbor?" Rei asked.

I shrugged. "Pretty much, yes. I didn't even know he was here until I was told about it by the leader of Calvaria, which was where Yuma was before he came to Meeden. No idea what he's doing here, though I can guess."

"Out of curiosity, when are you going to start using actual honorifics?" Rei asked.

"Probably the day when I finally figure out if I address Kitora as someone younger than me because of her age, or as a teacher or senior because I learned a lot of stuff from her." I muttered under my breath. That is still a point of confusion for me to this day.

"That seems like quite the dilemma." Rei had a small smile on her face.

I chuckled. "You have no idea. That aside though, do you want to do some ranked battles for practicing?"

"Are you sure? Does it not affect your Difand oath?" Rei asked.

I shrugged. "It's just simulated battles. We'll be fine, seeing as it doesn't actually hurt you. Besides, I need to practice with a shooter that doesn't instantly panic when I shoot a birdcage (birdcage is where the shooter directs trion bullets to cover all angles) at them."

"Alright then, I'll take you up on that offer." Rei said with a smile.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Rei Nasu

* * *

I. Hate. Lucca.

Alright, I don't really hate him. But seriously, causing all the buildings in my immediate vicinity to collapse so I couldn't scale buildings like I normally do? That was rude. Granted, there's rubble that provides cover, but it's nothing like what buildings can provide.

My thoughts were cut off as I saw another round of trion bullets do a sharp turn in my direction. As I dodged back, I noticed a couple of them do a sharp 90 degree turn away from me while the rest did a 45 degree turn towards me. Probably Lucca trying to calculate the potential angles where I might dodge.

A rain of trion bullets from above caught my attention. I couldn't help but sigh. Of course Lucca would try to prevent an opportunity for a counterattack. He wasn't hidden from the radar, so I had a good idea of where he was, but he was relentless in his attack. After shielding those bullets, I finally managed to shoot a round of vipers at him. Predicting the angle isn't particularly difficult, but Lucca could probably shield against that. I managed to get vision of where he was, cubes of trion floating around him as he tried to figure out what to do next. Probably a good time to get an attack in.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

Dammit. Rei didn't fall for the asteroid trap. I would have shot a birdcage at her right after, but she got a counterattack in, so I had to dodge that.

There was a trigger that I was trying to design that would help immensely with this fight, but it's still in the workings, as I haven't figured out how to make it efficient. If I did finish it though, it would make shooters that much more dangerous.

Oh, Rei just shot some more- OH CRAP THOSE ARE TOMAHAWKS.

I barely managed to jump out of the way in time as the place where I was camping before blew up in a glorious blaze of flames. I've never seen Rei use meteor and viper in tandem before. She must have been saving it for the ranked wars.

I sighed. This is going to be a long battle. And it was still the first one.

* * *

POV Change: 3rd Person

* * *

"So how are things going along, Dr. Lamia?" Auriel asked.

"It's fascinating, really. Aftokrator's technology is leaps and bounds above almost every other nation out there, though this particular trion soldier is clearly less efficient in trion usage than many others out there."

"Will that be a problem though?"

Dr. Lamia smirked. "Not at all. I've managed to make it much more efficient. Afto may be heads and shoulders above many other nations when it comes to fighting strength, but when it comes to trion soldiers, we're still heads and shoulders above them. We have one in particular that is much stronger than the rabits."

"Are you talking about your humanoid trion soldier that you've been developing? Your little Goddess of Destruction?" Auriel asked.

Dr. Lamia almost dropped the tool that she had in her hands. "How do you know about that? It's supposed to be a national secret."

It was Auriel's turn to smirk. "Despite my son's… intense dislike of me, he still reported directly to me when it came to gathering information. And he was very good at it. Good enough to know when something was being hidden."

He still remembered Lucca's report about it. A humanoid trion soldier that would be able to imitate human emotion on the battlefield and lull the enemy into a false sense of security because of it/her apparent innocence at first glance. A true masterpiece if he ever saw one. The only flaw to it being its combat mode. While it was destructive in every sense of the word, it was extremely inefficient, guzzling trion at a rate far faster than any other trion soldier in existence. Its codename: Lilith.

"I see. You are correct in your assumption. That trion soldier is my greatest project to date. She can easily destroy armies when supplied with enough trion."

"Fascinating. Would you mind showing me her capabilities?"

"After indulging me for so long, I think you deserve to see at least see her, if nothing else." Dr. Lamia said, leaving the rabit that she was working on to go show Auriel her finest creation. At the very least, he didn't know about her other one.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca Dux

* * *

"Well that took a while."

"You pull out a round of tomahawks on me and that's all you have to say?"

"This coming from the guy who destroyed every single building within five hundred meters?"

"Alright, fine. I deserved that."

 _Well look at the two of you, bickering like an old couple._

"Oh, shut up, Aria. I could have said the same thing about you and Lupin."

 _We were not like that at all. And why didn't you ever take my side when we argued? Lupin's arguments were so illogical that even one statement would have been enough to blow it up._

"Hey, I wasn't about to incite Lupin's wrath. He's freaking huge. The only reason he went easy on you was because you were stuck in bed. I still remember the time when he got pissed off at Alessio and tried to beat him up."

 _Lucca, literally all of your guard swore the Difand oath to you. Lupin included. They would never do anything to hurt you._

"For your information, Aria, Lupin was the last one to swear the oath. Your arguments with him happened before he swore the oath. I was not about to try and mess around with that workout nut."

I was currently carrying Rei on my back because she was tired. After all those ranked battles, the score ended up being four ties, three wins and three losses. I might have won had I used kogetsu, but we had agreed to strictly a shooter-only battle. Now, we were on the way back to her home. Come to think of it, I've been there quite a few times recently.

"Hey, Lucca?" Rei asked.

"Yeah?"

"Do you know what Difand was like?"

I frowned. "The most we have are stories of Difand. We don't even know what's true about those stories, seeing as every nation in the Neighborhood has a different variation to it. The only thing that all the stories agree on is that Difand became the first black trigger."

"Huh? So he isn't native to Liberi?"

I shook my head. "There are stories about how all the stars in the Neighborhood were originally one single planet, until a cataclysm occurred that resulted in the creation of the nations that we know today. During that time, there were a bunch of kingdoms that existed. One of the kingdoms was home to Difand, who was a common guard. The stories vary from there, but our variation on it says that Difand caught the notice of the princess of the kingdom during an assassination attempt on her life. According to the story, he jumped in the way of an arrow that would have killed the princess, nearly losing his life to save hers. After the assassination was thwarted, the princess personally attended to Difand's wounds, later asking him to be her personal guard. Difand was so honored by the princess that he swore the oath that now bears his name."

"And the kisses on the forehead?" Rei asked.

I smiled. Rei's inquisitiveness is really something to behold. "From what I've read about it, the princess's father, the king, would often make promises to the princess and seal it with a kiss to a forehead. She asked Difand to kiss her forehead to keep the promise, the same way her father would keep promises. Difand, eager to honor his oath to her, kissed her forehead twice to say the oath was stronger than any promise she ever had before. Elated, the princess kissed his forehead back, promising that she would honor his oath for as long as fate would let them."

"That seems really romantic of the two of them." Rei said. She might have been thinking about something else, but as I was carrying her on my back, I had no idea what she might have been thinking about.

I shook my head. "Hate to disappoint you, but this story doesn't end that well for Difand. One day, another assassination attempt was carried out by an opposing kingdom. Difand was mortally wounded during that attempt, and the princess was still in danger. Desiring to save the princess, Difand began converting his body into a trigger."

"People knew how to do that? Even back then?" Rei asked, surprised.

 _We still don't know all of the details regarding how triggers were used back then. There are some reports that point to this type of conversion being used mainly to sustain the planet, though we're not sure how. What we do know is that those triggers were referred to as world triggers, which were the only triggers at the time before Difand became the first black trigger._ Aria commented.

"That's pretty much all we know about it." I confirmed. "Difand managed to convert himself into a trigger, which the princess then managed to use it to defend herself from the assassins. In that way, he was able to keep his oath to the princess until the day the princess died. The creation of Difand's trigger was what triggered (no pun intended) the other nations to try and create their own triggers. None of them came close, though the development of these triggers was what eventually led to the modern day triggers that we know."

 _Uhh, Lucca? Rei's nodding off._

"Wh- no I'm not." Rei murmured, clearly tired.

I smiled. "That's fine. We're almost at your home. And I'm already done with the story as well."

"Aww, what a shame. I really wanted to hear more. It sounded like a really good story." A new (and familiar) voice said.

I nearly dropped Rei in surprise before checking my surroundings to see if there was any signs that Kumagai had been there before. To my utter chagrin, there were tons, from the long shadow behind me to the light footsteps I had been hearing for a while. I must have really been into telling the story for me to not even notice that.

"Story aside, is it official between you two yet?" Kumagai asked.

I blinked. "Is what official?"

Rei's squad member sighed before explaining. "Is it official that the two of you are dating yet?"

"No!"

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Yuko Kumagai

* * *

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! No need to give me the death glares." I said, holding back the laughter.

Synchronized responses again. Is it just because I asked same question or because they're really that in sync? Not to mention that Lucca's carrying Nasu-senpai on his back, something that you don't rather often. I guess I'll leave it alone for now. I was going to our squad leader's place, after all.

"So did you want something?" Lucca asked.

I nodded. "Our next opponents are Suzunari-1 and Tamakoma-2. Kuga had a duel with Murakami and I managed to get the recording of it. I just came here to tell Nasu-senpai that."

"Wait, don't the two of you live together?"

"When my parents are out. It's easier for me that way. I'll look at the data later tonight." Nasu-senpai said.

"Oh no you don't." Lucca instantly cut off my squad leader. "You are getting your rest when you get home, not exacerbating your condition."

"… Oh, fine."

I swear, they might as well be dating. Next thing we know, Lucca will be bringing flowers without any prompting from Arashiyama Squad.

* * *

POV Change: 1st Person, Lucca

* * *

"So, how's the design for the trigger coming along?" Arashiyama asked the next day.

I frowned. "Not that well, unfortunately. I've talked with the engineers and we've managed to get a working prototype, but it's still really brittle."

The trigger I had in mind was a variation on the lead bullet, except that instead of creating a heavy weight when it made contact with a trion body, it would instead create a link from directly opposite the point of contact to the closest object. In other words, if a person was next to a wall and hit by this trigger from the opposite side, then the person would be pinned to the wall. Only problem was, the link was too weak still, so it was easy to break out of.

"Hey, the engineers will figure it out eventually. And besides, once it works, it'll be significantly faster than the lead bullet."

"It'd probably work best with hound and viper. Just mix it in and let it rain down so it can pin the person to the ground."

 _You know, Lucca, I just had a brilliant idea._ Aria said.

"How about no?" I said.

 _What, why?_

"Last time you told me you had a brilliant idea, I ended up having to swim to a distant island just to get the herbs you wanted."

 _But it was a really good herb!_

"I got sick afterwards!"

 _This isn't that kind of idea! I can't even eat for crying out loud!_

"Oh. Fair point. What were you thinking?" I asked.

 _I can modify Armatus to have a long range mode. How does that sound?_

I was surprised, to say the least. It's been a while since my black trigger came up as a topic. "I thought there were only three forms for Armatus. You're telling me you can make more forms?"

 _Well, yeah._

"And you only discovered this now?" Kitora expressed her surprise.

 _Umm… it didn't really cross my mind until now._

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my sister.

* * *

 **So yeah, there you have it. I decided to put my own twist on the meaning of the title. Compared to the other parts, I wanted to focus more on the whole story of Difand that I made. It's a nice way to make connections instead of putting out random stuff. I like how it turned out, at the very least.**

 **Next chapter: Ranked Wars, Day 3. That'll probably encompass most of the chapter.**


End file.
